Don't disagree with anything you said, but when the company principal and maybe one or two other people do all the work in a high priced Western economy, they have to make a lot of profit on each unit to make a living. It's not just "cost". I'd assume payback per hour for Vincent to decide it is worth it to employ himself is very high. I don't think he's doing this to live at minimum wage. And as you said, in this market sector you can pump the price up and it may actually increase your sales. For certain segments, a higher price increases sales, instead of reducing them. His least expensive DAC is not his best selling one.
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Review and Measurements of Totaldac d1-six DAC
- Thread starter amirm
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Don't disagree with anything you said, but when the company principal and maybe one or two other people do all the work in a high priced Western economy, they have to make a lot of profit on each unit to make a living. It's not just "cost". I'd assume payback per hour for Vincent to decide it is worth it to employ himself is very high. I don't think he's doing this to live at minimum wage. And as you said, in this market sector you can pump the price up and it may actually increase your sales. For certain segments, a higher price increases sales, instead of reducing them. His least expensive DAC is not his best selling one.
That's actually a myth. Testing methodology is highly complex, and even seasoned scientists will employ specialist experts to properly design tests. Only on forums is ABX- double blind talked about as the generic "gold standard" for testing. It isn't. In professional circles there are lots of testing situations where ABX isn't considered the best method to test a hypothesis. Look it up sometime.
Please let us know where to look it up.
Get some texts on testing methodology. I've read some (in the past). Testing in fields other than medicine, (where randomly assigned groups and blind testing IS often used) uses all sorts of methodologies. You can spend your own time educating yourself, instead of using mine.
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Well, anecdotally, experience of the local audio cable manufacturer is that his best selling products (70% of sales quantity) are the most expensive ones.
None of his products is actually cheap, his entry cable is not cheap. So what happens is that lot of his customers act at 'cost no object' principle, because such are customers for expensive cables. They simply want the best, so they buy the TOTL product. His 'entry' line sells least (10%).
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I had a feeling a non-answer was forthcoming.
No, I'm just not interested in doing leg work for arrogant people who appoint themselves some kind of "scientific" expert, and don't have a clue about how actual science works.
The non-answer is yours: declaring a generic all encompassing "gold standard" for testing, when if you were honest, you'd admit you have next to zero knowledge of how testing is actually done in all sorts of research situations, especially many dealing with perception. Please show us YOUR basis for declaring as a fact that ABX/double blind/randomly assigned is a recognized gold standard all across science. It's generally used in drug trials, but even there it is acknowledged not to eliminate all bias/expectation and to have limitations. And not all testing is the same as drug trials - other types of research employ different methods.
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Well, you had better inform the AES, EBU etc. of the fact that they got it all wrong.
Chances are that several things you listen to these days were developed in conjunction with, or out of, listening tests in which I participated. So on their behalf, I apologise for their ineptitude and suggest you write to both institutions offering your undoubtedly wise counsel when it comes to the development of innovative techniques and standards.
Please take 10 seconds to name for us a scientific domain where something other than double-blind testing is used to establish whether humans can tell a difference between two non-visual external stimuli. Wine and gastronomy are not acceptable answers.
Thanks in advance for your very valuable time
Another BS response. AES is not a serious organization, sorry.
And again the claim was that ABX it THE research gold standard. Please prove that claim. Your anecdotal experience (whatever it is) doesn't do that.
KSTR
Major Contributor
Understood. So the shown response is a result of preprocessing in front of the DAC chip proper.
Hi
I don't think it began with ASR. Yet there is something compelling about the tests run by Amir and others at ASR: They are based on standards, Industry standards and they are repeatable. If someone disagree with a result he/she is free to run it and show the discrepancy. That is not what happened in the TotalDAC thread.
I though that the effects of ASR tests would be slight, after all, we have witnessed people whose personal experience with blind tests or level matching, could not dissuade them, e.g. blind tests, yet revert to their old ways.... This is not the case, ASR profile is rising and with it questioning about some well established practices in High End Audio Industry. The eternal rise of prices for no improvements. e.g. It is very difficult for anyone that has a modicum of electronics knowledge to find much value in the very expensive power supply of the Total for example. If one didn't know, fine, but once you know ... and now we know... Other will know. They will question and the product will have to improve or face the questioning... which rarely result in increase sales.
The well is drying. As much as the Internet brought them riches it is also carrying a large amount of dissent and of questioning that won't always be addressed with "Trust ME" ... We're living in a world where information is available. A good portion of High End Audio companies feeds on the beliefs (and insecurities ) of audiophiles. The pendulum seems to be swinging in a different direction now, people wand to be reassured of the validity of their purchase by something objective, by repeatable measurements, by metrics.
High End Audio almost took pride in saying that measurements don't count ... this line of reasoning is wearing thin. It is getting uncomfortable up there
I don't think it began with ASR. Yet there is something compelling about the tests run by Amir and others at ASR: They are based on standards, Industry standards and they are repeatable. If someone disagree with a result he/she is free to run it and show the discrepancy. That is not what happened in the TotalDAC thread.
I though that the effects of ASR tests would be slight, after all, we have witnessed people whose personal experience with blind tests or level matching, could not dissuade them, e.g. blind tests, yet revert to their old ways.... This is not the case, ASR profile is rising and with it questioning about some well established practices in High End Audio Industry. The eternal rise of prices for no improvements. e.g. It is very difficult for anyone that has a modicum of electronics knowledge to find much value in the very expensive power supply of the Total for example. If one didn't know, fine, but once you know ... and now we know... Other will know. They will question and the product will have to improve or face the questioning... which rarely result in increase sales.
The well is drying. As much as the Internet brought them riches it is also carrying a large amount of dissent and of questioning that won't always be addressed with "Trust ME" ... We're living in a world where information is available. A good portion of High End Audio companies feeds on the beliefs (and insecurities ) of audiophiles. The pendulum seems to be swinging in a different direction now, people wand to be reassured of the validity of their purchase by something objective, by repeatable measurements, by metrics.
High End Audio almost took pride in saying that measurements don't count ... this line of reasoning is wearing thin. It is getting uncomfortable up there
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KSTR
Major Contributor
Mathias (MC) has posted the neede settings for the on-board EQ to achive anti-sinc precorrection somewhere on the RME forum. Also, you don't need to pay TotalDac's 10% markup for a (fixed) bass boost option, it comes for free and is flexible... ;-)
not even sure what your point is arguing about whether or not the ABX and blind test in general is “the gold standard” other than to cast doubt on the useful of a blind test.
to me the important thing is, do properly conducted blind tests provide us with useful data? in my view, everything so far suggests “yes”.
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ABX is a specific testing methodology. Not the only one for DBT.
My knowledge on DBT methodologies is still really limited though.
What I have come in my mind to be possibly the best methodology might be similar to what someone called the AX.
Two systems in a single experiment. One is A. X can be either A or B. You answer whether you're hearing the same sound or a different sound.
Much lower complexity than ABX.
Don't use a strawman, @firedog specifically talked about the ABX, not about DBT as such.
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So, in other words..."I read it somewhere" is the best you've got?
One of the things that I appreciate about this forum is how the discussions are often loaded with references, graphs, thorough logic, etc. To participate in the discussion often means to further educate others who are participating so they can follow along as they choose. The old...'because I said so,' or 'I read it on the interweb,' isn't going to convince a lot of people of anything other than you just can't support your claim.
sweetsounds
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I’ve done a bit of research into this, primarily because I felt ABX was unnecessarily complex to detect small differences.
But, this conversation is probably much less about ABX specifically, and more about blind testing in general. A double-blind test is absolutely a gold standard in eliminating known biases. Randomized samples help perform the ‘double’ part of a single blind test, and so are useful in reducing certain kinds of errors in testing. There are many other kinds of blind testing. Some are designed for detecting large differences, others - small.
Regardless of the type, blind testing is necessary when it can help control for well known sources of bias.
sweetsounds
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Well no actually. This guy has obviously no focus on marketing or public relations. He probably just lost a good part of future customers, but doesn't care (his response to the concern "People might buy less NOS DACs because of these measurements" was "Great, that means less competition").
He is an engineer with the fixed idea to build the best possible ladder DAC, regardless if it makes sense to us to build such a DAC at all.
If you measure his masterpiece "wrongly", he treats you like an incapable.
He would react to the quantization noise with "don't tell me something which was clear before you opened your mouth. This was never the point.".
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