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Message to golden-eared audiophiles posting at ASR for the first time...

anmpr1

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Some empirical example:
One thing that needs to be stressed, and a traditional argument against steady state measurements, is that music is dynamic, covering multiple octaves. A 110dB (or louder) musical transient can be easily tolerated, whereas a continuous 'industrial machine' noise (such as metal rock) at 110dB is not going to be helpful for your long term hearing.

I have two amplifiers in use right now. A mono tube amplifier pair, rated at about 35-40 watts at 1% distortion at 1KHz.channel. Another is a SS amplifier rated at 100 watts/ch at 0.0003 % THD+N at full rated power, 20 Hz to 20 kHz. They both 'sound' OK to me, when used at their intended levels and application.

My guess is that with levels matched I might be able to tell them apart on my relatively sensitive loudspeakers (8 ohms, about 100dB/watt/meter), but I have no way to try. It would not surprise me, however, if I couldn't do that, reliably. On more 'demanding' loudspeakers, ones that dip into the lower sensitivity and ohmish regions, I suspect the difference would be more noticeable.

I've taken the on-line tests. There's a few of them out there. Usually, I can start to detect stuff by 3 to 5%. At lower levels, it's easy to fool yourself. All the 'subjective' stuff you read about in reviews does not impress me at all.
 

Multicore

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Is that distortion, per se? In the same sense as distortion in an amplifier or loudspeaker?
At high enough SPL the ear is nonlinear. I think it's analogous to distortion in a loudspeaker. I don't know the mechanism but I like to imagine it has to do with those ear bones (malleus, incus, stapes) rattling against each other.

Some emergency vehicles here in Boston have dual wailing sirens so loud that when I get close enough I can here the hetrodyne tone generated in my ear. It's a very interesting sensation because it's a very clear additional tone but I can easily tell that it's coming from in my head. When the siren moves away the extra tone disappears.


iu
 

Killingbeans

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The only problem with that is a pattern I've noticed for years:

Today you like it. Three months from now, you don't. The manufacturer designs in a "wow!" factor, but your brain slowly adjusts, and rejects the inaccurate response. Then you'll either live with speakers you hate or start auditioning new speakers ..... again.

Most people don't like that never-ending search. Jim

That's also one of the reason why I'll strongly advocate the use of burn-in. Not the hocus pocus kind that defies the laws of physics, but he mental kind.

When you get your hands on a new piece of gear that doesn't have that "wow!" factor and gives you immediate impression like "cold", "dull", "analytical" or just plain "boring", let your brain do some burn-in. After a while you'll possibly start to enjoy the correctness, and will no longer feel the compulsion to hunt down the next "wow!" factor fix.

As a bonus the burn-in can also give your brain the ability to filter out some of the minor offensive effects the gear might have. Sometimes when you discover something "terrible" through A-B-ing, it was never really a problem as far as your brain was concerned.
 
D

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As I have already said, the current set of measurements, highly informative and carefully consistent are great. But there if more to what we, can hear than is described by this limited set. I have offered several suggestions on what they may be. Can you explain when what you hear, is totally in conflict with the expectations? How do you explain another person who has no idea what you changed, care what it costs, or how much effort you put into it without being asked can offer the exact same description of the sound and blame it on sighted bias?

The scientific method is to make an observation, then investigate, hypothesize, test, and develop theory on which we can base a conclusion. Claiming I can't actually hear a difference and declaring the limited set of measurements perfect is making the conclusion first. Completely against the scientific method. How is this not clear enough?

I can't tell you how many times I have labored and spent money tweaking a speaker system having great expectations , brought it in and it stunk. Stunk to me, stunk to my wife. Sighted placebo?

I was stoked. The D30pro measurements were so good, they are hard to imagine in a consumer product. With great expectations, the "glare" difference to my other DAC was barely noticeable through speakers. Differences in very low level detail with headphones I can explain by the much lower noise floor. Objective measure described a difference is sound. Conclusion? Not that much different, good as it gets. Threshold reached and all that.

As I needed another DAC anyway, I wanted to get the Modius but it is out of stock, so I bought the Atom. After all, the conclusion was that is as good as it gets, and it measured better than my Asgard, it should be the same. Tossed it on. Huge difference in the specific sound that bothers me and my wife. I mean walk by the hall different. Sent the Topping back. I really wanted it to work. I mean, it was slick, every feature imaginable, fantastic specs. Loved the remote which surprised me. But the JDS flat out sounds better. So the CORRECT question, is what is different? Can we measure it? Can we quantify it, put it on a scale? Because we measure something as better by belief smaller or bigger must be better, is that true? What does our brain do to sounds based on the pattering it makes when we walk into a room and it evaluated the environment, audibly and visually? What allows us to perceive "Goldilocks"

I am not ready to declare I know everything, we can shut down research, fire all the scientists, kill the patent office because what we know is perfect. If you do, fine, you need not be in the discussion anyway as you have nothing to contribute or take away. Sorry. I hope to not quit learning until my last breath.

FWIW, I had 4 line level preamps and I couldn't tell them apart. My conclusion is we can make them "good enough" I only needed one, so with some romantic attachment overcome, sold my Nak. Not hard on the Hafler or DIY. The Nak was just sweet to use. Massive personal attachment and bias. It did not fit on the shelf, no headphones and I do the EQ in the host.
Dumping the horrible sounding Parasound, I compared my old Creek to my own MOSFET amp. At low levels, I could not tell them apart. By about relaxed levels, they were different slightly. "Signature" as the subjectivists would say. I suggest is the difference in Beta droop between bi-polar and MOSFET. Something we CAN measure. Handles dynamics slightly differently. Neither wrong in any sense. Both just fine. At higher levels, the Creek ran out of power. Quite expected. 40W clipping into my not very efficient monitors. Power supply less than 1/4 the current from my MOSFET that clips close to 100W which has 8 times the rail storage. Curious, the "defect" in the Parasound was not much unlike the defects I heard in DACs. Not exact, but in that range. That confirms there is something that can be measured there.

One last thing:
Probably 2/3s of my CDs sound identical on all my amps, and all my DACs. Source material matters. For example, all my Billy Joel highlight the issue in the cymbals. Joni Mitchel can kill it. Harry James trumpet gets too rough, Buddy Rich is too rough because that is how he conducted his band. Bream plays Alverez, bass strings sound metallic on the Parasound amps. These things are clear enough I can take a CD to stores and hear the same things repeatedly. I repeat ad-nauseum. Amazing how many very prestigious amps failed the Julian Bream test. Equally, last road trip, three integrated amps and I could not hear any difference in the strings. All passed. All "good enough" There is something to measure here.

A perfect example of confirmation bias.
 

Blumlein 88

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Your ear begins to distort somewhere around 80 db and gets worse as you go higher. It is true with short enough transient sounds it doesn't respond quickly enough to pick up on the distortion at the lower levels. But by 100 db and above distortion is high enough it will. Gunshots don't sound clean either in my experience.
 

Pdxwayne

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You may continue to put your head in the sand. It does not improve measurement science.
Many have asked yet got no answer from you. Again, did you do voltage matched listening at all or you simply switch DAC around to listen?
 

sergeauckland

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At high enough SPL the ear is nonlinear. I think it's analogous to distortion in a loudspeaker. I don't know the mechanism but I like to imagine it has to do with those ear bones (malleus, incus, stapes) rattling against each other.

Some emergency vehicles here in Boston have dual wailing sirens so loud that when I get close enough I can here the hetrodyne tone generated in my ear. It's a very interesting sensation because it's a very clear additional tone but I can easily tell that it's coming from in my head. When the siren moves away the extra tone disappears.


iu
The ear acts more like a compressor than distortion. The three bones work as a mechanical compressor, similar in action to a dynamic equaliser that changes frequency response and sensitivity with level. This action can clearly be seen in the familiar Fletcher-Munson curves. The compressor action is slow, both attach and release, as can be noticed after a loud concert, or being exposed to continuous loud noises such as traffic. Rapid sudden noises like gun-shots overwhelm the compression action, and there's no equivalent to a limiter, which is why a sudden very loud noise can cause immediate hearing damage.

S.
 

litemotiv

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The ear acts more like a compressor

Yes one thing that a lot of people for this reason also overestimate is our ability to hear nuance in higher frequencies. A lot of the Golden Ear anecdotes about DAC's et al pertain to subtle nuances, 'air' and other finesse in the treble range.

But the ear works logarithmically in the sense that it responds to SPL rather than frequencies. So the higher the frequencies the lower the SPL, and consequently the broader the range to which the ear responds. Below 100Hz or so every 5-10hz can be individually distinguished, but above 5-10Khz the ear will only respond to blocks of 1000Hz or larger and interpolate the specific frequencies that occur.

So most of the subtlety people think they experience in this regard is not specifically registered by the ear but is rather filled in by the brain.

A lot of 'audiophile' reviews overly focus on what (they think) happens in those higher frequencies, but that is also where most of the imagination takes place. It's one of the tell-tale signs when a reviewer is talking out of his [fill in].
 

Spkrdctr

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That's also one of the reason why I'll strongly advocate the use of burn-in. Not the hocus pocus kind that defies the laws of physics, but he mental kind.

When you get your hands on a new piece of gear that doesn't have that "wow!" factor and gives you immediate impression like "cold", "dull", "analytical" or just plain "boring", let your brain do some burn-in. After a while you'll possibly start to enjoy the correctness, and will no longer feel the compulsion to hunt down the next "wow!" factor fix.

As a bonus the burn-in can also give your brain the ability to filter out some of the minor offensive effects the gear might have. Sometimes when you discover something "terrible" through A-B-ing, it was never really a problem as far as your brain was concerned.
Yes, the brain will cover up a lot of inaccuracies. But, it doesn't do this in a linear form. It changes day to day, and is all over the place. This is the answer for many who say, "XYZ speakers sounded great when I first got them, but now there are some days they sound great and other days just good". As humans we think and feel in a linear fashion if possible. But, the brain "fixing" the music for you is not linear and consistent day to day. I have to always bring people back to the old Bose systems that left out a lot of frequencies (small cubes and small sub) but people believed the hype and bought them like crazy. The best we can do is get in room measurements and then treatments as good as décor will allow. Or, another way to say it, it is usually 90% of the time (but not always) the speakers and room interaction that everyone should worry about. The next new amp, wires, cable risers and crystal pyramid thingies are so low on the list as to not merit much attention at all. It is not a 100% guarantee, but it is a 90% one. Just throwing out a thought or two.
 
D

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You may continue to put your head in the sand. It does not improve measurement science.

If I understand you correctly, and I think that I do, what you are doing is trying to force "measurement science" to conform to your bias. When results don't conform to your expectations, you assert that there is a failure of science to understand why that is so. In other words, you give precedence to your subjective expectations, whether the results are positive or negative, rather than give precedence to scientific observation that tries to eliminate bias.

A little bias goes a long way! That's why double-blind tests, where 1) you don't know which device is under test at the particular time 2) output levels are matched as closely as is humanly possible, and 3) all other elements are equal, are the gold standard.

I know it is a tremendous temptation to believe something ... anything ... and then seek confirmation of it through science. But that's backwards. You don't believe something, you notice it. Then you seek to isolate it, then analyze it, then apply measurement standards to the analysis to see what it is that you noticed. If you believe as the first step, you totally negate all processes that could lead to your scientific (or logical) understanding of what it was that you heard.

You'd be surprised how may things that you notice, time and time again, don't really exist. Stated succinctly, it's part of being human. Jim
 
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tvrgeek

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Jim, you are not reading my posts, or I have not yet explained my position. My wife does not know, nor cares what box I am playing or even if I am testing, yet she can call it out every time. Explain that as my bias. Can you explain as bias that I hear the same thing, even sighted?

NO. I am saying we do hear differences. I do not know what they are, so the scientific method is to discover them. Maybe you don't hear differences so you have a bias that I can't either.

YES, seek to isolate. Seek to measure. That is what I have been saying all along.

YES, sound is only sound when our brain processes it. What I find objectionable may not be the same for you. We are human, I hope.

YES, out brain fills in all kinds of stuff. Watched an interview with a pianist and it was hilarious how many notes he does not play you think he does.

Don't you find it a bit arrogant to say our current measurement is perfect and that is all their is? Talk about BIAS!
 

Spkrdctr

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If I understand you correctly, and I think that I do, what you are doing is trying to force "measurement science" to conform to your bias. When results don't conform to your expectations, you assert that there is a failure of science to understand why that is so. In other words, you give precedence to your subjective expectations, whether the results are positive or negative, rather than give precedence to scientific observation that tries to eliminate bias.

A little bias goes a long way! That's why double-blind tests, where 1) you don't know which device is under test at the particular time 2) output levels are matched as closely as is humanly possible, and 3) all other elements are equal, are the gold standard.

I know it is a tremendous temptation to believe something ... anything ... and then seek confirmation of it through science. But that's backwards. You don't believe something, you notice it. Then you seek to isolate it, then analyze it, then apply measurement standards to the analysis to see what it is that you noticed. If you believe as the first step, you totally negate all processes that could lead to your scientific (or logical) understanding of what it was that you heard.

You'd be surprised how may things that you notice, time and time again, don't really exist. Stated succinctly, it's part of being human. Jim
I wish we could pin this post for all future new members to read. Well said!
 
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krabapple

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Lots of good stuff here. Let me present my humble contribution.

I officially have a Tin Ear according to a local hifi establishment. I was awarded this on the strength of auditioning the very first gen CD player and the handful of available CD's and declaring it to sound underwhelming, which it undeniably did.

Undeniably?

Are you sure you knew *why* it sounded underwhelming?

The point is, there's what you hear (sighted), and there's the *reason* for what you hear, and listeners often make erroneous assumptions about the latter based on the former.
 

audio2design

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What Drew Daniels was saying, was that if your system can handle it, you can subjectively listen very loudly without actually perceiving the physiological damage that is possibly (and likely) occurring to your ears. That is not a 'loud of crap', but intelligent advice... for anyone interested in protecting their hearing.

There is truth to we will "tolerate" higher volume with lower distortion, the rest of it was mainly a loud of crap, especially this statement,

We tend to judge loudness by the amount of distortion we hear, not by SPL! You wouldn’t adjust the volume control if you heard no distortion.

No we don't. Distortion will increase the real loudness that we experience as it relates to Fletcher Munson curves. It is not a "judgement". Having been involved in pro-audio on the equipment side, I often had my earplugs on hand as it was not distorted, it was just loud.
 

tvrgeek

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I wish we could pin this post for all future new members to read. Well said!
As a classic example of nearsightedness. Well intended. Articulated, but nearsighted.

Agree completely with Keith there. First CD mastered were very poor, engineers did not understand the medium yet, hardware was lacking, and we can go MEASURE many of the short comings.
 

audio2design

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As I have already said, the current set of measurements, highly informative and carefully consistent are great. But there if more to what we, can hear than is described by this limited set. I have offered several suggestions on what they may be. Can you explain when what you hear, is totally in conflict with the expectations? How do you explain another person who has no idea what you changed, care what it costs, or how much effort you put into it without being asked can offer the exact same description of the sound and blame it on sighted bias?

The scientific method is to make an observation, then investigate, hypothesize, test, and develop theory on which we can base a conclusion. Claiming I can't actually hear a difference and declaring the limited set of measurements perfect is making the conclusion first. Completely against the scientific method. How is this not clear enough?

Yawn. You have said it yourself. You appear to not have anything that allows you to take even the most basic of measurements and you don't blind test, so not only are your anecdotal reports near meaningless, there is nothing to back up that the measured performance was proper either. Using big characters does not change that.

Today, our measurements on the electrical side are pretty substantial. When you roll in IMD, multitone IMD, THD over frequency and power, SINAD over frequency and power, etc. we have a much more complete view of what our electronics are doing. There is some potential for system interaction and ground loops, but that can be characterized too, and you can always measure right at the speaker.

The scientific method is controlled observation and isolation of variables. You have an anecdotal report with no controlled observation and no isolation of variables. That is about as unscientific as it gets.
 
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krabapple

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As I have already said, the current set of measurements, highly informative and carefully consistent are great. But there if more to what we, can hear than is described by this limited set. I have offered several suggestions on what they may be. Can you explain when what you hear, is totally in conflict with the expectations? How do you explain another person who has no idea what you changed, care what it costs, or how much effort you put into it without being asked can offer the exact same description of the sound and blame it on sighted bias?

The scientific method is to make an observation, then investigate, hypothesize, test, and develop theory on which we can base a conclusion. Claiming I can't actually hear a difference and declaring the limited set of measurements perfect is making the conclusion first. Completely against the scientific method. How is this not clear enough?

Set up a bunch of well-controlled, proctored blind tests of your unproven hypotheses, and get back to us.

Meanwhile, skepticism of sighted results remains well warranted for well-established scientific reasons.

I can't tell you how many times I have labored and spent money tweaking a speaker system having great expectations , brought it in and it stunk. Stunk to me, stunk to my wife. Sighted placebo?

I was stoked. The D30pro measurements were so good, they are hard to imagine in a consumer product. With great expectations, the "glare" difference to my other DAC was barely noticeable through speakers. Differences in very low level detail with headphones I can explain by the much lower noise floor. Objective measure described a difference is sound. Conclusion? Not that much different, good as it gets. Threshold reached and all that.

As I needed another DAC anyway, I wanted to get the Modius but it is out of stock, so I bought the Atom. After all, the conclusion was that is as good as it gets, and it measured better than my Asgard, it should be the same. Tossed it on. Huge difference in the specific sound that bothers me and my wife. I mean walk by the hall different. Sent the Topping back. I really wanted it to work. I mean, it was slick, every feature imaginable, fantastic specs. Loved the remote which surprised me. But the JDS flat out sounds better. So the CORRECT question, is what is different? Can we measure it? Can we quantify it, put it on a scale? Because we measure something as better by belief smaller or bigger must be better, is that true? What does our brain do to sounds based on the pattering it makes when we walk into a room and it evaluated the environment, audibly and visually? What allows us to perceive "Goldilocks"

I am not ready to declare I know everything, we can shut down research, fire all the scientists, kill the patent office because what we know is perfect. If you do, fine, you need not be in the discussion anyway as you have nothing to contribute or take away. Sorry. I hope to not quit learning until my last breath.

No one is talking about perfect. Mainly we talk about how things measure, and what's audible. Your hysteria is unwarranted. Psychoacoustics is still an active field.

And your anecdotes mean nothing to me. (Or to my wife)
 

killdozzer

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Jim, you are not reading my posts, or I have not yet explained my position. My wife does not know, nor cares what box I am playing or even if I am testing, yet she can call it out every time. Explain that as my bias. Can you explain as bias that I hear the same thing, even sighted?

NO. I am saying we do hear differences. I do not know what they are, so the scientific method is to discover them. Maybe you don't hear differences so you have a bias that I can't either.

YES, seek to isolate. Seek to measure. That is what I have been saying all along.

YES, sound is only sound when our brain processes it. What I find objectionable may not be the same for you. We are human, I hope.

YES, out brain fills in all kinds of stuff. Watched an interview with a pianist and it was hilarious how many notes he does not play you think he does.

Don't you find it a bit arrogant to say our current measurement is perfect and that is all their is? Talk about BIAS!
You have to take into account that the one I love and the one that loves me is always on my side. A wife is not a best measuring device regardless of what one might think.
 
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