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Subjective descriptors for audible transparency (that aren't BS)

MattHooper

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Your opinions will begin to carry water with me when you discuss blind testing, objective performance and transparency. Until then, it's all the same fluffery and puffery that infests every other audio forum on the web.

Seriously...

https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php?topic=3974

They've got your exact concerns covered there. Tons of info! No purely subjective puffery allowed, just as you prefer it!

The well-known Arny K. has a lot of posts there (and he has some posts here). I always enjoyed Arny's contributions.
 

pwjazz

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Gosh, I can't help myself, I must answer ...

Your opinions will begin to carry water with me when you discuss blind testing

You could try building a hardware ABX tester and using the software that I wrote to control it if that'll make you feel better. I did this fairly early in my still young audiophile journey and the exercise quickly convinced me that differences between competently built DACs and amps are inaudible, at least to me.

transparency

You seem to be very interested in electronics (DACs, amps and so on), which is cool. I consider that largely a solved problem, and I'm more interested in transducers, especially headphones. Because that actually involves an interface with a human body and mind, "transparency" is a lot less well understood in that domain, let alone even how to measure equipment. That's why I've been experimenting not just with physical test fixtures like a MiniDSP E.A.R.S. but also taking measurements on my own head using in-ear microphones. Calibrating those is proving a bit challenging, but it's fun anyway.
 

Wes

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It is very fair to wonder what the correlation of something like noise level or harmonic distortion is with subjective assessment of SQ using blinded tests.

It would also be "nice" if we knew how many and which objective performance measurements are needed to completely characterize the SQ of a given amp, much less speakers.
 

pwjazz

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It occurs to me that I contributed to us getting off topic, apologies to @Incursio ! The original question was how to describe the benefits of audible transparency using audiophile-friendly language. I already made a suggestion, curious to hear what more there are.
 
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