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In Reply to: RE: TESTS: Round-up of Windows and Mac Audio Players. posted by Archimago on June 13, 2013 at 08:15:23
.Maybe I missed it, but it isn't listed on your AA profile or anywhere I can find in your musings. IMHO if you have any hope of being taken seriously you need to list your stereo system like every other legitimate reviewer (if there is such a thing... sorry Mercman, no offense intended :>)
You say you hear no difference and I believe you, but is that on your laptop speakers or a high end system?
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Edits: 06/14/13Follow Ups:
bwb said:
"Maybe I missed it, but it isn't listed on your AA profile or anywhere I can find in your musings. IMHO if you have any hope of being taken seriously you need to list your stereo system like every other legitimate reviewer (if there is such a thing... sorry Mercman, no offense intended :> )"
Interesting comment, and important to address. Firstly, who said I was a "reviewer" or "hope" to be "legitimate"? :-) I'm just a Gen X geek who likes audio technology and want to demonstrate a few things with gear I have. I run a blog for enjoyment/distraction in a busy life to show how I come to some conclusions. I am happy to be proven wrong and learn from others. I have nothing to sell or care if any monetary unit is exchanged based on my posts. Where it is subjective, or opinion, I identify as such or highlight it as various "musings" posts. Along the way I share a few albums I've come to enjoy...
I hope that others can benefit and explore not just the subjective side but the objective side of how *engineered* consumer products work based on scientific principles and laws of physics and mathematics (especially digital/computer gear). When folks around here encourage others to "try it out", is this not the spirit of exploration everyone should at least think about for themselves? Not only to find out what "sounds right" but ultimately even address one's own perceptual and psychological limitation compared to just what "is" (as best we can tell). At times I will take a swipe at the bizarre side of audiophilia (like the post on "Dr. Frank's" digital coaxial cable), but I think most rational individuals would see that the humor isn't mean-spirited or rude.
Does it matter as it relates to what I posted what I normally listen to? Is this some kind of "street cred" issue? Does it matter if "my speaker is bigger than yours" or if I spent $1,000 vs. $500,000 on the system?
If it makes any difference; my primary mode of audio enjoyment is not laptop speakers or boomboxes. It's quite adequate.
A few months ago, I spent an afternoon listening to a pair of Grande Utopia EMs (sounds very good). I could purchase those in cash if I wanted. That too is an "objective" fact based on the value of my bank account; I am not a starving student or in "want" of a fancy system, nor envy what friends/audiophile reviewers may have... If I bought those speakers and posted this on my profile, would that matter? Should that matter to the "legitimacy" of a technical post on audio player programs in Windows / Mac?
One more thing, and let me be very frank. IMO the most important thing about the profile of a subjective reviewer I would care about - HOW IS THIS PERSON'S HEARING ACUITY? After that, then lets talk experience with audio gear, music, philosophical leanings, etc... What do I care if the reviewer has a fancy brand DAC/speaker/turntable/cable or his system is $50,000 more than mine? I *would* care that he might have tinnitus, occupation-induced hearing loss, or presbycusis though.
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Archimago's Musings : A 'more objective' audiophile blog.
One's reference system does make a difference in what they can hear.
I am more impressed when I see a listing of DIY components that extremely expensive boxes.
But, when I see a system of recognized low resolution equipment and no mention of refinements to this gear I am skeptical of pronouncements.
Maybe one cannot make a silk purse of a sow's ear but a determined audio obsessive can make one with a linen/silk blend. And on the other hand there are plenty of silk purses out there which are lined with acetate (a very cheap fiber) - sheep in wolves clothing that (visually) impress those who care nothing about good sound. Money spent is no indicator of sound quality as everyone here knows.
When someone gets defensive about this they have given themselves away.
You obviously care about good sound. So I am confused by your reticence.
An explanation of what you have assembled for the purpose of listening is not asking too much and I doubt was asked with any animus towards you.
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Like was said... it has nothing to do with money
It has everything to do with what you are using to evaluate how something SOUNDS... not how it measures.... how it SOUNDS!
You claim everything sounds the same but won't divulge what is making the sound?
your credibility is therefore zero....
end of story
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I agree, the findings just don't accord with my experience. All it seems to prove is either his system is immune to all digital interference/artifacts or his hearing is not up to the job.
What would be good would be to have a test between two different setups where everyone agrees there is a difference and see if his measurements can find any difference. eg wasapi/asio, small buffers/large buffers, win 7/win 8, JPlay/foobar asio etc
"You claim everything sounds the same but won't divulge what is making the sound?"
No, I didn't claim "everything sounds the same". I just said bit-perfect software sounds the same.
The sound was obviously "made" (and measured) off my TEAC UD-501 DAC for these tests. Where I went into detail with subjective portions of the evaluation that I felt likely would be contentious (ie. JPLAY) it was with listening off the TEAC --> Sennheiser HD-800 headphones. I was even able to A-B the sound essentially instantaneously between the standard ASIO driver and JPLAY. I believe I made this quite clear.
As for the rest of the articles, okay, perhaps I did not mention the hardware used to listen "over the years" but the point was to use the same TEAC DAC to compare objectively in a controlled fashion on the test bench for these posts... Again, with the HD800 I could not hear a difference. I believe I had the AKG Q701 attached for portions of the Mac tests as well. It really would not matter whether 3 years ago I had a Benchmark DAC1, 2 years ago listened to the Weiss DAC202 (decided USB was the future), last year started using the ASUS Essence One on my computer workstation, or this year bought the TEAC for my laptop setup.
All of this has nothing to do with my main system which I thought was what you were initially commenting on with that "profile" comment because I still use my Transporter for the "big rig" which still sounds fantastic all these years.
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Archimago's Musings : A 'more objective' audiophile blog.
ie what are you looping back into?
Sorry if it is already clearly stated and I just missed it. I admit to not having read many of the words and just looking at the pretty pics but I did make somewhat of an effort to figure it out on my own with no success.
It's the E-MU 0404USB 'pro'/consumer ADC device which works pretty well up to 24/192 with about 19-bit resolution.
I appreciate that others have questioned the validity of the results using the device. However, it has worked well for me so far and have shown me things I certainly would not be able to detect with my ears like the effect of digital filtering, pre-ringing, J-Test spectra of various gear...
So far, I do not believe anyone has posted data to refute my findings either.
There is one good thing about using a simple ADC also - *ANYONE* can try this for themselves and that has been one of my purposes for posting. There is no mysticism needed in audio.
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Archimago's Musings : A 'more objective' audiophile blog.
I have one of those E-Mu 0404 USB's as well. It's good to know try and compare my results to yours if I were to start doing RMAA testing.
One thing you'll find is these fellas can be super picky when it comes to this stuff. I have personally learned to appreciate this pickiness over time.
Maybe if you redid your testing with one of these *please see link) it would shut them up. Look at it's sweet noise/distortion etc specs.
" Maybe if you redid your testing with one of these *please see link) it would shut them up."
It's still far from 24 bit resolution. The noise performance is 10 dB worse than that of my DAC. The Benchmark AD1 may sound good, but it's not a laboratory instrument.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
"It's the E-MU 0404USB 'pro'/consumer ADC device which works pretty well up to 24/192 with about 19-bit resolution."
More like 16 or 17 as Thorsten says. This is about the same as I get with my juli@ sound card. If you still don't understand the issue of FFT gain then I suggest you do so before doing additional experiments.
It's not necessary to do any maths to understand the issue from a practical standpoint. It can be seen readily using simple tools such as an audio editor. These have the ability to generate test signals (e.g. silence) and do format conversions (e.g. dither). They also include FFT analysis capability that allows control over FFT size as well as FFT window. For example, dither noise at 44/24 measures out at -176 dB as plotted by SoundForge 10c, using a 65K Blackman-Harris window. (In addition to effects of FFT size and window, there will be slight differences in plots with different software due to various reference level issues, but these differences will probably not be more than 3 dB.)
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
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Yes, I should have been more specific in my "everything sounds the same" comment. I do realize you limited that to the bit perfect experiments.
I wasn't referring to any particular rig since as far as I could tell you hadn't stated any rig at all. I admit I haven't read every word of all your musings, but I've read quite a bit and must have missed the headphone part.
I do have some concerns about your listening tests. The TEAC is an $850 player that has some amazing capabilities so it makes you wonder if they had to cut any corners to hit that price point. If so is it possible that one of those corners would be in the analog circuits that drive the headphones? It seems highly unlikely that they could make everything in an $850 box state of the art, and it might just require a complete state of the art system to reveal the differences you were looking for.
I haven't heard it so I am not drawing any conclusions, but one does have to wonder what you would have heard on another perhaps higher resolution system.
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and judgements about differing sound or lack of same.
I doubt if the reason for the question has to do with the monetary value of your system, in fact I think most here would concede that a decent pair of headphones in the few hundred dollar range might be more than adequate to discern an audible difference between various audio players and DACs.
But the fact that YOU discern no difference MIGHT call into question exactly what audio 'tools' you are using to pass that judgement, especially as others here seem to think they can.
Ultimately the tool for assessment = EARS.
Hence my comment on the importance of this as the most important factor in the "profile" of subjective reviewers...
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Archimago's Musings : A 'more objective' audiophile blog.
a Bose system, I'll be devastated!
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