100 papers on superconductivity and only 3 on audio. You would think he knows how to do a proper experiment. I guess superconductivity dosnt get him enough attention.
That is precisely what I post in my comment which got deleted by AES moderator. I tried to contact that moderator but his email alias is defunct and my email to him bounced.From his conclusions: ". This work shows that two system configurations differing ONLY by the interconnect pathway are audibly discernable, even by average listeners".
So he doesn't consider the change from balanced out/in electronic circuits to unbalanced between the 2 tests as a difference in system configuration? Talk about amature science. His work shows nothing.
To me what is interesting is an unexpected result.
I spoke with one of my contacts who is familiar with both and he said there is no assurance that the XLR and RCA outputs behave the same.The DAC was Berkely Audio Alpha series 2. The Series one was measured by Amir, and it is a good DAC. The power amp was a Spectral which is also a good amp. Both perform very well with RCA or XLR inputs. I've known people with both and owned a Spectral myself. Where is the difference coming from?
I know that people have stated, with links, that Kuncher made many mistakes in this paper:
Thread showing inaccurate measurements:
However, I have not seen why his blind test was invalid. Can someone point to an issue where he may have allowed a sighted A/B comparison, or where the dB level was off?
We are often told to “do a blind test”, and I’m assuming no one is asking for detailed mathematical formulas, just the method of conducting the test and the results.
Thanks in advance.
Well certainly approaching something Kunchur wrote about audio my priors put the probability of it being correct are pretty low.I would recommend that anyone interested read Randi’s account of Targ & Puthoff experiments.
Besides the obvious test setup difference, controls snd data handling could be a question and would need examination. It’s a pity, but Kunchur’s baggage here demands a Baysian approach.
He validated frequency response, noise and levels. The only thing that stood out is higher noise of the RCA cable, but it seems at too low a level in the audible band to explain the results.He didn't compare cables. He compared single ended to differential and never once validated the end to end signal integrity. He is a charlatan plain and simple.
Frankly, I am surprised it was published--I thought the AES is all about engineering (and by extension science). Am I wrong in thinking this?
He validated frequency response, noise and levels. The only thing that stood out is higher noise of the RCA cable, but it seems at too low a level in the audible band to explain the results.
My guess is that it is then a mixed boat. I have reprints of the Neville/Thiele/Small papers as a for instance, and never having had a subscription, have not been exposed to the gamut. So I did the next best thing and used google scholar so that I can at least see abstracts, and then picked a handful of topics (convolution, imaging distortion) which fetched thousds of papers, all seemingly with a highly technical bent.You are wrong.
So there are differences between cables?
With a balanced cable you have 2 amplifier stages operating out of phase, (I'm ignoring transformer-based output sections). With a single ended cable, just one amplifier stage is involved. So, when comparing the two cable types, the cable is not the only thing you are changing.
Balanced means equal impedance on each leg. One leg could be completely passive.Balanced connections use inverted polarity on one signal conductor. The signals are in phase. Phase is a manifestation in the time domain.