On Wednesday, January 9, 2013 8:30:28 AM UTC-8, wrote:
On Tuesday, January 8, 2013 10:51:10 PM UTC-5, Audio_Empire wrote:
Someone is still not "getting it", I think. Subconscious differences that
stimulate the pleasure centers in the brain may not show up as differences
in the normal sense.
What does that mean? Differences are either apparent to you, or they are not. Is it possible to derive more pleasure from A than B without knowing it? Of course not.
Differences noted (or not noted) between components
in DBT or ABX test act upon the analytical centers of the conscious mind.
And you know this how? Are you a neuroscientist? Have you used fMRI to map subjects' brain activity while undergoing an ABX test? Or are you just inventing "scientific" principles to fit your preconceived notions?
On that level, there may be no discernible differences. But on a subliminal
level, these differences might just register as a greater amount of pleasure
for one component over the other. I said earlier that there would be no
way to test this. On further reflection, I think that's wrong. I believe that
a DBT could be easily set-up to test such a hypothesis. If the listener
didn't know which two components to which he or she was listening,
and could listen to the same full recording before switching and then
listen to the other DUT for the entire same recording again, and then
chose either A or B based on the amount of "pleasure" he or she received
from listening to the recording twice, perhaps it would be useful.
Sure it would be useful. If you did that, you'd find out how wrong you are, and we wouldn't ever have to hear about such speculations again.
But here's the catch: You can't just do it once. You have to do it 20 times, and prefer the same option at least 15 times out of the 20. Then you'd be onto something.
I know that I have often compared two amps, two preamps and two DACs that
way, and have often preferred one over the other, without being able
to put my finger on exactly why.
Unmatched levels? Presentation order bias? Sighted bias? The possibilities are endless.
Another example is that I have the Classic Records repressing (on
single-sided, 200 gram virgin vinyl at 45 RPM) of Stravinsky's
"Firebird" by Dorati and the LSO. I also have the same recording on
CD. Both the CD and the remastered LP were overseen by the
work's original producer, Wilma Fine. Being the same original
analog recording from the same master tape, they of course, sound
essentially the same. But for some reason that I cannot explain,
I find myself pulling out the LP to play rather than the
(excellent sounding) CD. With all of its pops and ticks, I find the
LP a much more pleasurable listen than is the CD.
You're joking, right? Even in the highly unlikely event that precisely the same master was used for both LP and CD production (which would be tantamount to professional incompetence, IMHO), you're doing a sighted comparison on different devices with differing levels of resolution. Oh, and we know you don't level-match properly, so there's that, too.
What part of "I enjoy" the record more than I enjoy the CD" do you not understand, Nab?
Where did I say that this is a test? More importantly when I said "Being the same original
analog recording from the same master tape" I assumed that the reader understood that
this meant that both the CD and LP were of the same performance, made from the same
original master. I said nothing about how many interim steps it might take to to come up
with either. I do know for a fact that Fine digitized the CDs directly from the original tape
her late husband recorded back around 1960. The tape used to master the LP, of course
was a copy. Nobody uses a valuable master tape to cut an LP. Having mastered a number
of records myself, I can tell you that's just standard procedure.
Try making a clean CDR of the vinyl, and compare the three things--LP, CD, CDR--with proper bias controls. You'll be replicating this famous experiment:
Why? I'm not interested in an "experiment" in this case. I merely noted that some recordings
give me more listening pleasure than others, and I gave a couple of examples.
http://www.bostonaudiosociety.org/ba...x_testing2.htm
Will do.
Of course, the test subject was a notorious vinyl-hater, so we can write off the results as an obvious function of listener bias. :-)
bob
Audio_Empire