[Edmund[_2_]]

On Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:37:27 +0000, Arny Krueger wrote:

"Audio Empire" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:07:13 -0800, Arny Krueger wrote (in article
):

"Chuck Finley" wrote in message
...
I bought an Escient music server several years ago when hard drive
space was
still relatively expensive. Most of my music on there is encoded at
320 and
192.

Shouldn't be a problem.

Reviews of DACs typically discuss how they can improve the sound of
CD quality or hi-rez music,

Generally, false claims. Audiophile myths. Dreams, not actualities.
Blatantly false sales pitches. The results of sighted evaluations.

Not exactly true. While I agree that most DACs that are constructed
using IC
converters sound so much alike that the differences (if any) are
trivial, high-end DACs using discrete, proprietary circuitry not only
can sound better
than the mass-produced IC chip-based DACs, but they sound significantly
different from one another.

Reliable proof?

The skeptical members of this forum should form a consortium to offer a
signficiant cash reward for reliable proof.

After all, it worked for the Great James Randi!

You did? if you see him again say Hi to him, I love that man :-)

Edmund

[Andrew Haley]

Edmund wrote:

At the time when Compression meant exactly that,: "compressing" and
some sneaky developers "sold" there reduction scheme as
"compression" and with that, they introduced a misleading and plain
wrong term.

When was that time, though? In 1984 Terry Welch wrote in his classic
paper: "The data compression described by this model is a reversible
process that is different from other forms of 'data compression'
..... in which data is deleted according to some relevance criterion."
So it's clear that "lossy compression" was familiar at that time.

At the time the claim was made it was inaudible, inaudible by who
and played on what?

What claim was that? The people who designed perceptual coders did a
lot of blind testing, and in _Subjective Evaluation of
State-of-the-Art 2-Channel Audio Codecs_ (1999) its audibility was
studied in considerable detail.

Andrew.

[Audio Empire]

On Thu, 15 Dec 2011 04:03:00 -0800, Mr. Finsky wrote
(in article ):

On Dec 14, 6:37=A0pm, "Arny Krueger" wrote:
"Audio Empire" wrote in message

...



Reliable proof?

The skeptical members of this forum should form a consortium to offer a
signficiant cash reward for reliable proof.

After all, it worked for the Great James Randi! AFAIK, no cable snake oil
artist or reviewer has ever even tried to collect the million dollars.


I do recall reading that various audiophile writers have attempted to
test the Great James Randi and collect the million smackers. The
problem is that Randi avoided all contact with anyone trying to do a
test. Randi is wonderful about publicity but appears to avoid a
confrontation that might cost him money or demonstrate that he may be
as big a phony as his "magician" targets.

Personally, I know I can hear the difference between mass market junk
and "audiophile" gear. I do think that the law of diminishing returns
exists in the audiophile world. The improvements obtained by spending
more money become small, once you have reached a certain price point.

Unfortunately, when much of this stuff is subjected to a so-called
"bias-controlled" test (like a DBT or ABX test) in a lot of cases, these
differences disappear. In other words, the guy who, an hour ago, swore that
he could hear the difference between mass-market junk and "audiophile" gear,
couldn't tell which was which once he could no longer see what it was that he
was listening to in a DBT or ABX test. I know that this is fact in cables.
Cheap, throw-away RCA interconnects, for instance, sound no different from an
expensive multi-hundred (or even multi-thousand) dollar interconnect in a
double-blind test AND, they even measure EXACTLY the same. But people still
insist that they can hear the difference and the expensive cables always
sound better than the cheap ones! However once subjected to a DBT, suddenly
these cables sound exactly the same.

Recently I've been involved with group of other recording engineers and
recording enthusiasts in DBTs of DACs, What we have found is that essentially
all DACs built using IC D-to-A converters sound so much alike that in a blind
test, nobody could tell (most of the time) that the people conducting the
tests had switched from one converter to another! What we found was that a
$300 Musical Fidelity V-DAC sounded identical to a $1000 Benchmark DAC1, and
that the Benchmark sounded identical to a $1400 Antelope Zodiac +! Later we
contrasted the Antelope Zodiac + with a $6000 Weiss DAC202, and could not
tell the difference between them in any statistically significant way,
either. When we contrasted these IC-based DACs against cost-is-no-object
discrete component designs from MSB and dCS, for instance, we found it quite
trivial to tell the difference between the two expensive DACs and their
cheaper IC-based competition. Those who post here and believe that everything
sounds the same because electronics for audio is a "mature technology"
discredit this notion by stating that IC-based DACs HAVE to better than
discrete component units because it's easier to control the variables in an
integrated circuit design than it is to control them in a design built-up of
discrete components. They also say that the IC DACs are transparent, and that
this has been proven because some testers have daisy-chained DACs and ADCs
together and compared the results with only one conversion, this proving that
modern DACs add nothing to the sound.

What I have found is that IC-based DACs do is to homogenize the audio and
then preserve that homogenization through repeated conversions. I say that
because, compared to the dCS Debussy and the MSB DAC-IV, that's what IC-based
DACs all sound like - homogenized!

Now with amps, some sound better than others. I have a pair of Behringer
A-500 power amps. They're cheap ($200 for about 160 Watts/channel) and they
sound fine....... until you A/B them against a Krell S-300i! (150
Watts/Channel) then, even in a DBT, the Krell shows what it is made of. It
sounds much cleaner, much more musical with better dynamic contrasts, and
better sound-staging. Many of these improvements aren't immediately apparent,
and some only show-up with certain kinds of program material and certain
signal conditions, but they ARE there and do show-up in DBTs. In fact there
are certain circumstances where ALL amplifiers sound different from one
another, even similar amps. This comes down to things like power supply
design, but these differences do exist, and usually the audiophile gear
outperforms the cheap, mass market gear, even if they have similar specs (the
everything-sounds-the-same crowd is going howl at this statement!).

I examined and tested the difference between 192 .wma files and a aiff
files ripped through iTunes. The difference was quite minor. However,
the cost of hard drives is so low that saving space is not worth the
potential problems. Besides, ripping CD's through dbpoweramp to FLAC
is loads of fun and flexibility.

FLAC and Apple Lossless both seem pretty flawless.

[Arny Krueger[_4_]]

"Audio Empire" wrote in message
...

Unfortunately, when much of this stuff is subjected to a so-called
"bias-controlled" test (like a DBT or ABX test) in a lot of cases, these
differences disappear.

Why would that be unfortunate?

In other words, the guy who, an hour ago, swore that
he could hear the difference between mass-market junk and "audiophile"
gear,
couldn't tell which was which once he could no longer see what it was that
he
was listening to in a DBT or ABX test.

I've certainly seen that happen, a great many times. It first happened to me
after I built the first ABX box and did the first ABX test. I then saw it
happen to an ever-widening group of people. First close friends, and then
casual acquaintances, and ultimately people I never knew.

I know that this is fact in cables.

It is a fact for an ever-increasingly large circle of equipment. However, it
will *never* be true for LP playback and analog tape.

Cheap, throw-away RCA interconnects, for instance, sound no different from
an
expensive multi-hundred (or even multi-thousand) dollar interconnect in a
double-blind test AND, they even measure EXACTLY the same.

Pretty much. I have measured subtle differences among interconnects.
Different interconnects of reasonable lengths also have small but clearly
measurable effects on some of the equipment that they are used with. I can
reliably measure these differences using test equipment based on the
single-chip mainstream ADCs and DACs that are commonly used these days.

But people still
insist that they can hear the difference and the expensive cables always
sound better than the cheap ones! However once subjected to a DBT,
suddenly
these cables sound exactly the same.

No surprise. And, now that we have ADCs, DACs and other components that have
fewer measurable differences among them and as compared to the technical
ideal, than exist among some interconnects as they are commonly used...

Surprised?

BTW, these ADCs and DACs that perform technically better than some
interconnects as the interconnects are used, are all mainstream single-chip
devices, or even single chips with a goodly number of both ADCs and DACs on
the same chip.

I see no reliable evidence that *anybody* can reliably discern audible
differences among ADCs and DACs with better than +/- 0.1 dB response in the
usual audio band, that also have all spurious responses 100 dB or more down.
I hear occasional anecdotes, but they are so incomplete and vague as to be
IMO completely irrelevant to any reasonable discussion. Please prove me
wrong!

[Sebastian Kaliszewski]

Audio Empire wrote:

Those cheap IC-based DAC chips MIGHT be sonically transparent to the
Hoi-Polloi, but they sure don't sound as good, or image as well as a good,
discrete component DAC such as those used in the MSB DACIV or the dCS
Debussy. This has been noted in DBTs against a number of other DACs using
IC-based Burr-Brown (TI), AMD and ESS DAC chips from manufacturers such as
Benchmark, Antelope, Musical Fidelity, Music Streamer, Cambridge and Weiss,
to name a few and the differences can be measured and easily seen. Look at
the 1/3-octave spectrum-with-noise data, or the Intermodulation spectrum
plots or the high-resolution jitter spectrum data and contrast the results of
the IC-based DACs with those from some of these discrete component units such
as the MSB and dCS units mentioned above. Their superiority is as easy to see
as it is to hear.

I suspect that the DBTs that show all modern DACs to be more-or-less equally
transparent were comparing DACs using the more popular mass-produced
integrated circuit DAC chips. Like I said in another post, only the ESS
32-bit "SabreDAC" has any real edge here, either sonically or by measurement,
and it still doesn't sound or measure as good as the MSB proprietary "Ladder
DAC" or the dCS "Ring DAC".

OK, where are those measurements of dCD or MSB devices? And how about
repeatability of those measurements?


This type of "everything sounds the same" argument certainly makes audio
cheaper. If everything sounds the same, then there's no reason to buy
anything expensive. A $50 CD player sounds exactly like a multiple thousand
dollar unit so all one needs to buy is the $50 player. All amplifiers sound
exactly alike, so why buy a Krell integrated for $3000 when a $150 TEAC
receiver from Costco performs exactly like it? It's tempting to believe this.
Too bad that neither of these money-saving assumptions is true.....

Take heart, though. A $5 Radio-Shack interconnect DOES sound exactly like a
$4000 pair of Nordost Valhallahs and a hank of 14-gauge lamp cord does
perform identically to a speaker cable from Oracle costing many hundreds of
dollars per foot. Also, the IC processes keep improving and chips like the
SabreDAC are closing-in on the cost-is-no-object designs, so there is hope
for us financial mortals after all!

Sorry, but measurements of speaker wires differ much more than
measurements of decent DACs (if those DACs are considered neutral and
have measurements considered good).

As I wrote before -- those things do not add up.

Decent DACs are esiencially neutral down to -100dB or better (noise,
thd, nonlinearities, intermodulation, channel separation, etc). that
is down to 0.001% -- all that in range from 1 to 40000Hz.

Virtually no speaker wire is as flat (due to low - just few Ohms,
impdenace of load, even 0.1 Ohm wire impedance translates to much
greater distortions).

Thus, my questions: where are the measurements of this discrete
component DACs? How they were made and by whom...

rgds
\SK
--
"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity" -- L. Lang
--
http://www.tajga.org -- (some photos from my travels)

[Audio Empire]

On Sun, 18 Dec 2011 06:37:06 -0800, ScottW wrote
(in article ):

On Dec 15, 7:58=A0pm, Audio Empire wrote:
On Thu, 15 Dec 2011 04:03:00 -0800, Mr. Finsky wrote
(in article ):
On Dec 14, 6:37=3DA0pm, "Arny Krueger" wrote:

Reliable proof?

The skeptical members of this forum should form a consortium to offer a
signficiant cash reward for reliable proof.

After all, it worked for the Great James Randi! AFAIK, no cable snake oil
artist or reviewer has ever even tried to collect the million dollars.

I do recall reading that various audiophile writers have attempted to
test the Great James Randi and collect the million smackers. The
problem is that Randi avoided all contact with anyone trying to do a
test. Randi is wonderful about publicity but appears to avoid a
confrontation that might cost him money or demonstrate that he may be
as big a phony as his "magician" targets.

Personally, I know I can hear the difference between mass market junk
and "audiophile" gear. I do think that the law of diminishing returns
exists in the audiophile world. The improvements obtained by spending
more money become small, once you have reached a certain price point.

Unfortunately, when much of this stuff is subjected to a so-called
"bias-controlled" test (like a DBT or ABX test) in a lot of cases, these
differences disappear. In other words, the guy who, an hour ago, swore that
he could hear the difference between mass-market junk and "audiophile" gear,
couldn't tell which was which once he could no longer see what it was that
he
was listening to in a DBT or ABX test. I know that this is fact in cables.
Cheap, throw-away RCA interconnects, for instance, sound no different from
an
expensive multi-hundred (or even multi-thousand) dollar interconnect in a
double-blind test AND, they even measure EXACTLY the same. But people still
insist that they can hear the difference and the expensive cables always
sound better than the cheap ones! However once subjected to a DBT, suddenly
these cables sound exactly the same.

Except in single ended systems. Some cheap interconnects have such a
high resistance on the ground/return that system noise is elevated.
No need for an interconnect to be expensive to deal with this but some
of the stock cheap stuff is simply too poorly made.

Jensen has a couple of excellent articles that touch on the subject.
This is just one.

http://www.jensen-transformers.com/a...%20seminar.pdf

ScottW

I've never run across any interconnects like the ones you mention and the
ones Mr. Whitlock mentions in his paper, but they could exist, I guess. He
is, however, very correct when he says that the advertising hype about
"transmission-line theory" often used by cable manufacturers to justify their
high-prices, is a lot of hooey and that at audio frequencies,
transmission-line effects don't come into play until the average audio
interconnect is more than FOUR THOUSAND feet long!

There are a number of things that the average audio enthusiast and measure
quite inexpensively if he so wishes. One can go on E-bay and buy a used
function generator for just a few bucks, likewise a used oscilloscope with a
6 MHz bandwidth can be had very cheaply as well. With these two instruments
(and some cable adaptors) it is possible to test some of these cable claims
quite thoroughly. With the o'scope and the signal generator set to sine wave,
it is possible to test the cable's bandwidth and its frequency response. This
will tell you if the manufacturer is "cheating" by putting outside components
on his cables to alter their frequency response and therefore cause them to
sound "different" from their competition. You can also check their bandwidth.
I've never measured any audio interconnect of a meter or less that wasn't
dead flat from DC to at least 1 MHz! Next, using the function generator
switched to "square wave" output and the oscilloscope again, it is possible
to look at a cables' square-wave response at 10 Hz or 1 MHz, and anything in
between. No interconnect that I've tested has shown anything but a perfect
square wave at any frequency up to one MHz, which is plenty for any audio
component. Square wave shape shows bandwidth limitation, excess capacitance
and inductance, as well as distortion and induced noise. It doesn't take many
such tests of high-end vs cheap cables to see that there is no measureable
difference between any of them.

[FlispRopCop]

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