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[Poll] Is no-distortion really better than any distortion?

Is no-distortion (or below audible limits) always better for music playback than any distortion ?!

  • 100% right

    Votes: 94 57.3%
  • somewhat right

    Votes: 24 14.6%
  • don't know

    Votes: 26 15.9%
  • somewhat wrong

    Votes: 5 3.0%
  • 100% wrong

    Votes: 15 9.1%

  • Total voters
    164
  • Poll closed .

tomtoo

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The PM'ed 'proof' turned out to show the majority of the folks taking the test preferred low mounts of distortion to inaudible amounts of distortion.
Not surprisingly ...
@lashto needs to find other DBT evidence that shows the majority of people enjoys audible amounts of distortion.

Was this the intention of @lashto ? If so it would maybe more easy to look what mastering engineers do to make the sound more pleasant?
 
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lashto

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@BDWoody @solderdude I specifically and as nicely as possible asked you two to not post/discuss that DBT in this thread. It's offtopic. Make a thread about it if you wish.
I am so very grateful that you understood :)
 

solderdude

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This IS about distortion and whether or not it is desirable. You claimed there was proof that showed there is a preference for 'distortion' where the proof said the opposite was true. Why should you claim in public the proof was a fact and not allow to post something relevant (namely the fact is the opposite of what you claimed) and state that this thread is about opinions about distortion while 'quoting' my opinion and yet any discussion about distortion is irrelevant..
 
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lashto

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Was this the intention of @lashto ? If so it would maybe more easy to look what mastering engineers do to make the sound more pleasant?
music production ~= distortion infusion is a good example. But no, that is not the intention of this poll
 

solderdude

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Was this the intention of @lashto ? If so it would maybe more easy to look what mastering engineers do to make the sound more pleasant?

I think the intention of Lashto is that certain (very small) amounts of 2nd order distortion is desirable to most music enthusiasts.
To look for opinions if that is the case, instead of specifying this in his question, he took a canon and tried to perform microsurgery with it.

(mis)quoting me and asking unclear questions with non conclusive poll choices didn't make this better.
 
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lashto

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This IS about distortion and whether or not it is desirable. You claimed there was proof that showed there is a preference for 'distortion' where the proof said the opposite was true. Why should you claim in public the proof was a fact and not allow to post something relevant (namely the fact is the opposite of what you claimed) and state that this thread is about opinions about distortion while 'quoting' my opinion and yet any discussion about distortion is irrelevant..

Being nice and polite is just useless around here. A giant surprise:D

3. If we exclude those that were unable to hear a difference between tracks, what was the ranking between "best" to "worst" sounding samples?
Doing this will bring the total sample size down to 55 respondents. Check this out:
-75db THD = added HD. As in "buuuhuhuuu, run for your life, he added a giant (relatively) amount of artificial Distortion".
-175db THD = the original file, aka "no distortion".

-75db of added THD was preferred as "best sounding". Better than the original. Better than "no distortion". By people who actually heard the difference! 55 of them.

There are 5-10 graphs in there: by age, by location, HP-users, speaker-users, musicians, engineers, etc, etc, etc... Almost every single group ranked -75db as best sounding. With the single and very interesting exception of "Hardware Reviewers". Who ranked -30db THD as even better that -75db THD o_O. I knew those reviewers were smoking something good!
A really well done DBT that one, wish he had a lot more respondents.

... the proof said the opposite was true.
really dude!?!? "the prrof said the opposite". Really, really, really ?!
And all this after I very nicely and politely asked you to NOT bring that discussion into this thread !? Are you trying to win some sort of "most obnoxious" prize? :)
 
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solderdude

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Are you trying to win some sort of "most obnoxious" prize?

Yes... and I am winning ! :)

I think you are misinterpreting this.
Those that DID claim they could tell the difference and posted their results had made a guess while they thought they could hear it and they chose ever so slightly (as in coin toss result) in favor of the 0.02 Percent distortion over no distortion. Coin toss difference really !
The 0.3% was a bit easier to hear. The 3% distortion was even clearer to pick out.

Is it possible (obnoxious as I am) that there was no 'clear preference' for 0.02% versus no added distortion that the difference between no distortion and 0.02% distortion is equally inaudible and can't be really told apart but is due to 'gambling' as in 50-50 outcome of any BT without an obvious difference ?

So you disagree with the conclusion that was drawn by the tester himself ?

when we look at the average responses as a "group of audiophiles", we can see that there is still a preference for the "low distortion" samples B (-175dB/0.0000002%) and C (-75dB/0.02%) over the "high distortion" samples A (-50dB/0.3%) and D (-30dB/3%).

What I can say from the "objective" results based on this blind test is that as a group, listeners still prefer the sound of lower non-linear distortion

The fact that you conclude most people have a preference for 0.02% distortion (-75dB) is a conclusion you drew.
Flip a coin 62 times in a row and you get the same 'spread' as that between those that said they could hear a difference.
Add to that those that can hear differences between the 3% file and other files will state they heard differences and rightfully so (as well as expected).
Claiming that all of these individuals had a (clear) preference for 0.02% over no added distortion is just ... well... misinterpretation ?

(sorry for the obnoxiousness, I can't help it)
 
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lashto

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I think the intention of Lashto is that certain (very small) amounts of 2nd order distortion is desirable to most music enthusiasts.
It's not.
That is just what the quoted DBT proves. As said, IMO that DBT is offtopic.
 

solderdude

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It's not off topic. You dragged it in as proof that people preferred -75dB distortion over no distortion.

You misinterpreted the data.
The data showed that in a BT (it wasn't a true DBT) where the 0.3% and 3% were not included the result was close to 50% percent which you can also reach by coin flipping.

On top of that the people that claim they could hear distortion even couldn't tell 0.3% and 3% apart with a coin flip difference just in favor of the highest distortion.
 
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lashto

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Yes... and I am winning ! :)
100% agreed

I think you are misinterpreting this.
I don't. Who wins here? :)

Is it possible (obnoxious as I am) that there was no 'clear preference' for 0.02% versus no added distortion that the difference between no distortion and 0.02% distortion is equally inaudible and can't be really told apart but is due to 'gambling' as in 50-50 outcome of any BT without an obvious difference ?
If that was just a single "all users" graph with a tight result I would've thought "yes possible". Maybe there was an error somewhere, may be a glitch in the matrix, maybe some testers were joking, maybe ...
But there are like 10 graphs in there. Young users (best ears) preferred distortion by a large margin. ~Everyone else did, even the most experienced audio professionals. And there is also a graph which shows that the users were able to correctly (re)rank samples from 0% to 3% THD. By THD and not by "best sounding" preference.
So I would say no, not possible.

It might be a strange result for many, but it is very hard to doubt it. My guess is that Archimago couldn't believe his eyes either and that's why he did split hairs in 10 different graphs trying to find the 'error'. He couldn't find any. Ask him for the data, have a go at it, maybe you'll find it.

So you disagree with the conclusion that was drawn by the tester himself ?
No, I only disagree with you :p

(sorry for the obnoxiousness, I can't help it)
I wish you were the only one in this thread who couldn't ...
 
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solderdude

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So... to get back on topic ... what was your conclusion from your poll.
The way you handle statistics is clear. You should go into politics :)

ASR people preffering low amounts of distortion are wrong and people prefer inaudible low amounts of distortion instead ?
 

Jimbob54

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So... to get back on topic ... what was your conclusion from your poll.
The way you handle statistics is clear. You should go into politics :)

ASR people preffering low amounts of distortion are wrong and people prefer inaudible low amounts of distortion instead ?

I still definitely want to read OP's conclusion- amenz to that.
 
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lashto

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It's not off topic. You dragged it in as proof that people preferred -75dB distortion over no distortion.
Of course it was me. It's not like I PM-ed you with the lovely expressed wish that you don't discuss it in this thread.

The data showed that in a BT (it wasn't a true DBT)
you must be nitpicking's biggest fan ever...

The user is alone with the samples, there is no test-organizer in the room to influence his opinion. That's actually 'blinder' than a DBT. Or maybe you think that Archimago put his secret voodoo 'influencer sauce' in the zip file ? :)
 

MRC01

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...When you change the frequency response you can undo this without problems.
You change the waveform but do not distort it. It can be undone.
When you add non-linearities you add frequencies that aren't supposed to be there and cannot be undone.
...
I don't quite understand the part about non-reversibility of distortion. Adding noise seems non-reversible. But distortion seems reversible.

Example: Take a digital musical wavefile, apply FT to extract the Fourier Series. Alter the series by adding a wave having a frequency that didn't previously appear in the series. And then sum them all up to construct a new wavefile, which now has distortion in the narrow technical sense (a frequency that wasn't there before). However, this is perfectly reversible because I can decompose this new wave to its Fourier series, remove the frequency I added, then sum the rest back up, which gives me the original wavefile.

This relates to another question: harmonic distortion adds new frequencies to the wave. But what if wave already has energy at those frequencies? For example, consider a wave consisting of a 600 Hz fundamental, with waves of decreasing amplitude at all integer multiples 1200, 1800, 2400, etc. Harmonic distortion won't add new frequencies, since they're already there. It will only change their amplitudes, so it's no longer considered to be "distortion", it is just a "filter"?
 

bobbooo

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You misinterpreted the data.
The data showed that in a BT (it wasn't a true DBT) where the 0.3% and 3% were not included the result was close to 50% percent which you can also reach by coin flipping.

It wasn't even a guaranteed blind test, let alone a double blind test. Archimago himself said:
Don't be pulling out your audio editor to peek at the files before you actually listen and submit your results! If you do pull out that audio editor, perhaps refrain from posting pictures of FFTs and the like, and avoid discussions of results so you don't influence others...

So it was wide open to abuse, which invalidates the results. He should have required respondents to do proper blind ABX tests of the samples using Foobar2000's comparator with logs and checksums as proof. This would not only solve the problem of people 'cheating' by looking at the waveform, but if you set the threshold of passing the test as identifying 13 out of 16 trials, this would be solid statistical proof that the listener could actually differentiate between the samples, rather than just having a lucky guess. As it stands the results are not statistically robust at all, and are consistent with random chance between the -75 dB and -175 dB samples as Solderdude stated.
 
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lashto

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So... to get back on topic ... what was your conclusion from your poll.
The way you handle statistics is clear. You should go into politics :)
ASR people preffering low amounts of distortion are wrong and people prefer inaudible low amounts of distortion instead ?
Thanks, very generous of you :)
Nobody was right and nobody was wrong. Some people in this thread are quite sick of "who's right and who's wrong".
Apparently it's impossible to grasp the fact that everyone is 'right' in an opinion poll.
 
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lashto

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It wasn't even a guaranteed blind test, let alone a double blind test... So it was wide open to abuse, which invalidates the results...
I am actually a big fan of absurd theater so let me entertain you :) Let's see how that test was screwed beyond recognition:
  • user lashto secretly visited all downloaders of the zip on 7 continents (he has magic tracking powers!). And he whispered into their sleepy ears "choose distortion, choose distortion".
  • the black angel of distortion had a week free and used his tricks on people.
  • archimago truly has an "influencer sauce" for zip files.
Alternate hypothesis (you know, just in case):

Eugene Ionesco said:
Never, ever listen to any advice coming from anyone, except this one
That's an actual sample of absurd theater for you. A really good one IMO.

P.S.
I find it quite encouraging that we moved from "the numbers do not show D crickets" to "the test methodology was wrong". Real progress :)
 

bobbooo

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Thanks, very generous of you :)
Nobody was right and nobody was wrong. Some people in this thread are quite sick of "who's right and who's wrong".
Apparently it's impossible to grasp the fact that everyone is 'right' in an opinion poll.

The opinions are fine, it's the poll that was all wrong - a question and OP with heavily biased and ambiguous wording, two out of three options that make zero grammatical sense, and a conclusion that ignores basic high-school logic.
 
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tomtoo

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I am actually a big fan of absurd theater so let me entertain you :) Let's see how that test was screwed beyond recognition:
  • user lashto secretly visited all downloaders of the zip on 7 continents (he has magic tracking powers!). And he whispered into their sleepy ears "choose distortion, choose distortion".
  • the black angel of distortion had a week free and used his tricks on people.
  • archimago truly has an "influencer sauce" for zip files.
Alternate hypothesis (you know, just in case):

That's an actual sample of absurd theater for you. A really good one IMO.

P.S.
I find it quite encouraging that we moved from "the numbers do not show D crickets" to "the test methodology was wrong". Real progress :)

Dear @ lashto we all enjoy some added distortion but that was not the question. The question was if we like it in the reproduction chain.

Even that poll was heavily bad influenced from pro. The outcome was no!!!
 
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lashto

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I don't quite understand the part about non-reversibility of distortion. Adding noise seems non-reversible. But distortion seems reversible.
AFAIK there is no 'aparatus' in this world that can fully reverse HD. Theoretically (math) you can apply an 180 degree reversed H2 to cancel the existing H2. But that's only theory.
 
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