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What would it take to change your view?


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52 minutes ago, scumbag said:

And top marks to Santa for "thanking me" for leaving the discussion. You guys are a bunch of opinionated bullies. 

Not sure why you are leaving. As the OP, I hope it wasn't anything I said

I hoped this thread would spark a discussion about what it would take for an individual to change their own view about something.

That means

- there are no wrong answers. By definition it's personal opinion and self-assessment

- there no trying to change someone else's view. I'd respectfully ask those trying to do that to go to any number of other threads

 

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I think he was displeased by my comments on the relative technical accuracy of the output of a DAC with respect to the analog input signal, compared to what any analog recording medium has managed to date.

 

A pity, because I really liked his thoughts on convergence overall. I happened to focus on his comments about the goals of DAC design, because it brought up something I had mentioned in a previous post about digital tech needing to 'approach analog sound', or not. I thought he and I had a 'sidebar' going, related to the thread topic by raising the question of whether this is one of those views that 'could change', and what it might take.

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Guest Eggcup The Daft
9 hours ago, scumbag said:

I think there's a lot of convergence as we move up the tree in HIFI. The high end manufacturers of tube amps (and pre-amps perhaps) seem to have been addressing, to varying degrees, the deficiencies in tubes (output impedance, noticeably higher levels of even order distortion and so forth). So for most people that might mean they sound more "solid state". Then the SS guys are manipulating their circuits to avoid the deficiencies that people throw up about transistors. The amount of times I've read statements about SS Class-A amp's sounding like "tube amps" is amazing. But it just highlights that when people hear a relaxed, rich, non-aggressive sound they revert to terms that everyone understands (or the cynical will just conclude that reviewers are lazy).

I guess similar things are happening in digital audio - designers are striving to make their DAC's indistinguishable from analogue sources. Personally I think that's a lost cause but that's an aside.

So anyway, get a really great modern SS amp' and a really great modern toob amp and perhaps, given the above its not so shocking that we find it hard to discern the two technologies from each other.

 

The convergence is in improvement in manufacturing quality of components, and in design understanding. Designers can now more closely match their target sound. That does not mean that all designers have the same targets, or that all products are approaching the same sound. "Class A" and "tube" sounds are more mythical than ever, although some products do attempt to provide the type of sound that is described by those labels. In the source area, I would say that those in the turntable industry have improved their sound the most, having worked very hard in the lean years to compete. Heaven help us if DACs are deliberately designed to sound more like vinyl playback: both camps should aim to sound more like music!

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7 hours ago, rantan said:

This raised a question if I may.

 

Does this mean that the avoidance of using feedback in a tube amplifier is detrimental?

I am happy to be corrected here, but I am aware that many highly reputable valve amplifier makers avoid using feedback as much as possible or only use it to a tiny degree.

 

I am asking this because I genuinely would like know and not to make any particular statement.:)

There's no longer one anti-feedback camp. Some designers are aiming for different sounds that come from their preferred valve combinations, while others who believe that feedback is an issue have learned to build more "accurate" amplifiers (or to build to their particular target parameters) with lower feedback. Some designers have only been anti global feedback, and there are solid state makers who are also eschewing global feedback.

So the answer to your question, just as with almost any other design trend, is "it depends".

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On 1/30/2018 at 6:30 PM, rocky500 said:

I was typing up an answer to No.1 and it was getting to big to put in here in some else's thread. :)
2. Since I could not reliably pick a difference in my tests, I always went with the one that saved me money.

I'm quite a practical person, in that, I always want the best I can for the least amount of money.

By all means, please do put the long post in here. It's about how your mind was changed, and entirely relevant.

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14 hours ago, Eggcup The Daft said:

By all means, please do put the long post in here. It's about how your mind was changed, and entirely relevant.

Not sure how long as it was a little while ago but I remember my stereo progressing very nicely over many years. As I could afford it, I looked around online and what others were suggesting and was buying some very nice components that came up 2nd hand mostly. I got back into this hobby from maybe 20 years+ of not really having one.

I was always looking forward to getting time to sit down and listen to more music.It was all progressing really well.


Then I started reading on forums about how we can fool ourselves and BT's are a great way to rule out any bias's.

Started into a 6 month period of doing many of these tests on my components. What I found interesting is everything sounded the same between components. Preamps, Amps, Dacs etc in my tests. I could never reliably or it was to hard to be sure I heard a difference.Being practicle I thought I may be waisting money on the more expensive components and went with the cheaper components every time. Bought some cheaper amps and pre and did my tests and sold off some more expensive gear as I could not reliably pick a difference in the tests.

I don't think it was that long but something was off with my music. Just did not draw me in like before. There was none of the moments that the music just held me in.


Went online to read up on others doing these tests and saw lots of tests between different Dacs, amps, pres in blind tests and the results were pretty well always the same. No one could reliably pick a difference in these quick tests.

Went to forums on some of these guys that do these a lot or at least talk about them a lot and noticed there was a lot of conflict.

Loads of conflicting opinions.
Went back to just buying and listening over very long periods to see if I liked something and if it brought that thing that was missing back to my listening sessions.
So far it has worked out great and I am back to really looking forward to listening sessions. It is not a super system like others I have heard from some SNAers but the enjoyment is there for me.


I also now expect to see more threads like this where the OP finds they can't reliably hear a difference in the tests when they do a blind test. As it is what I experienced, so was not a surprise to me.

Why I asked if maybe they too might find something like this over a longer relaxed just normal listening sessions.

I thought it could be that the Devialant ends up being the one that wins out in the listening sessions and found to be different over the longer periods. Does not matter which one but I found that is just what happens to me.

This happened to me recently. LINK

Some will still say I am fooling myself (they always will, but it works for me) but hopefully as many others have posted quite often before me, it might give fellow snaers the notion to take a step back and realise that this might not only be the right way forward in your music enjoyment.

Hopefully some will take the time to also do the long listening sessions to see what works for them and not write off something to quickly from a DBT/BT test that I think personally makes everything sound the same and hides the subtle differences that can make quite a big difference.

Edited by rocky500
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Guest Eggcup The Daft

@rocky500

 

Thanks.

I started writing a response, and then found of course that I was repeating myself...

 

I'm sure the key thing here is confidence in the system. As you said in the other thread, the brain interprets the music.

When I've asked others about points where they aren't enjoying music at home, generally people are still enjoying and getting into music when they hear it on TV, cheap transistor radios, other people's far inferior stereos and so on. They had higher expectations from their more expensive setups, true, but there isn't really a playback quality question as such. I'm prepared to bet your cheaper system was still pretty good.

 

Your blind tests had a "can't tell the difference" result. They did nothing, I suggest, to quell the little voice in the back of your head regurgitating all the audiophile stuff (or even just "but expensive is better"), or to build confidence at the subconscious level that does the initial processing of the sound. Any process, however flawed objectivists might find it, that built confidence again would get you back to listening.

 

So yes, your last sentences are correct. They're even correct when the subtle difference doesn't exist in the soundwaves at all, which appears to be more of the time than we believe. (That last sentence is one of the key points of our disagreements.) But it comes from "the brain interprets the music". The process you are using is still right for you, regardless of whether there are differences in sound or not, though. And for all that I might preach about the science, same for me. I choose sighted for that reason.

 

The other point to be made is that the industry thrives on the doubt. That's a different conversation though.

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On 2/2/2018 at 7:56 PM, rocky500 said:

Hopefully some will take the time to also do the long listening sessions to see what works for them and not write off something to quickly from a DBT/BT test that I think personally makes everything sound the same and hides the subtle differences that can make quite a big difference.

Now, it would be interesting if you did a long listening session (an hour?) without knowing what is playing to find out if you can identify what is in use among two electronic devices (Pre-Amp, Amp, DAC etc) that provide different experiences sighted.

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22 minutes ago, Satanica said:

Now, it would be interesting if you did a long listening session (an hour?) without knowing what is playing to find out if you can identify what is in use among two electronic devices (Pre-Amp, Amp, DAC etc) that provide different experiences sighted.

Did it here recently by accident

 

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19 minutes ago, Satanica said:

Relatively close, but not quite.

I don't tend to do hour tests either now.

Just like to put something in my system and just listen to it over days/weeks and then maybe make an opinion of it.

My stereo can sound quite different depending on time of day, different days, late at night, so like to see how something goes over all these times.

Edited by rocky500
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44 minutes ago, rocky500 said:

Just like to put something in my system and just listen to it over days/weeks and then maybe make an opinion of it.

My stereo can sound quite different depending on time of day, different days, late at night, so like to see how something goes over all these times.

The end game is to listen to the music and not the system. This can only be achieved by the right machinery but the right mindset is required too.

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Yes I think back how much I enjoyed my listening sessions over the period with the new gear in there.

Where they better? Did I enjoy my listening sessions as much? etc. Sometimes when something is not right, it does become a bit like listening to the system instead of the music.

eg. like a harsh treble, excessive bass etc 

 

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5 hours ago, jeromelang said:

Hmmm...

 

We have experienced this issue in a few systems.

 

Each time devialets were unplugged, the resident power amps and all upstream electronics perform better sonically.

Hmmm indeed. If this is demonstrable in a controlled test using a typical scenario, it strongly contradicts the claim that impressive-looking linear power supplies actually do their job. Embarrassing. 

 

 

Edited by Newman
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On 2/9/2018 at 12:19 AM, jeromelang said:

Is this switching amp throwing nasties into the power grid mucking up the sound of nearby audio componentz?

Given that switching power supplies are commonplace these days (e.g. in television sets), it is remarkable to me that an audio component would lack sufficient resistance to switching hash superimposed on the mains power supply 50Hz sinusoid.  It suggests to me an inadequate approach to the design of the audio component!

 

I am still relatively new to this audio forum and still coming to terms with some of the listening experiences that are referred to.  Can you describe the nature of the "mucking up of the sound"?  For example, does a component pick up hash and reproduce it like the sound of the background noise on the AM broadcast band?

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10 hours ago, MLXXX said:

I am still relatively new to this audio forum and still coming to terms with some of the listening experiences that are referred to.  Can you describe the nature of the "mucking up of the sound"?  For example, does a component pick up hash and reproduce it like the sound of the background noise on the AM broadcast band?

 

Oh, so, you're only a newbie....?

 

You certainly are one of the loudest voices on the thread about "run-in".

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2 hours ago, jeromelang said:

It has become common knowledge around here that many things you can't hear...

Perhaps you are right because if there's a point you are making that's relevant to this thread, I can't hear it. 

On the other hand I can hear a personal insult 

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45 minutes ago, jeromelang said:

Oh, so, you're only a newbie....?

 

You certainly are one of the loudest voices on the thread about "run-in".

I see I commented on one of your posts in that thread in a forthright manner. It is true that even as a newbie I felt strongly that extending the scope of the [cable] burn-in thread to a discussion of interconnect directionality, sensitivity to being touched, and the need to power down a system for up to 48 hours before touching an interconnect; would have been too extreme an expansion of the subject matter.  The thread was already very long!

 

As for the current thread, perhaps I was wrong to ask you what you meant by "mucking up of the sound". Perhaps that was too far off-topic a question to ask. This thread's topic is simply "What would it take to change your view?".

 

_________

 

As I said, a very sobering experience and one that I'm still struggling to come to terms with. But if I'm honest with myself, my audio beliefs have been shaken to the core!

 

So to my question (finally):

 

You are likely to have views, some strongly held, about certain aspects of audio. Just look at the heat that has been generated in recent threads.

 

My question is: what would it make for you to change your view

Well Sir Sanders, as I am not an experienced audiophile many of my beliefs are provisional and more in the nature of hunches than firm beliefs.

 

Two of my hunches are:

  • today's built-in DACs are more than adequate, making the use of an external DAC unnecessary
  • the use of a specialised headphone amplifier is unlikely to provide an audible benefit for headphones, over the use of the audio output socket of a good quality mobile phone.

I am aware that many audiophiles would be aghast at those two suggestions!

 

They are only hunches but to displace those hunches the sort of evidence and explanations I would be looking for would be:

 

  1. DBTs establishing an ability for people with healthy hearing to distinguish between the specialised device and a standard good quality device performing the same role.  [For a DAC, a 44.1kHz sample rate source would be good to include in the testing.]  
     
  2. If a difference is established in 1, an analysis of the nature of the difference. For example, is it that the specialised device has introduced a significant departure from a flat frequency response? Or, is it that the standard device has introduced audible distortion?

 

This is the type of evidence and analysis I'd look for in other audiophile areas too, such as the highly controversial matter of cable "burn-in". 

 

 

Taking weeks to assess a difference in "listening fatigue" 

 

For me, stories about having to wait weeks to discover that a device B that sounds indistinguishable from device A introduces more "listening fatigue" than device A, carry little weight. I cannot dismiss such claims completely, but they are on the fringe of plausibility for me. I say this because I experience listening fatigue primarily as a function of my variable physical and mental states, and the type of music being played. I suspect most other people do too. 

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18 hours ago, MLXXX said:

Given that switching power supplies are commonplace these days (e.g. in television sets), it is remarkable to me that an audio component would lack sufficient resistance to switching hash superimposed on the mains power supply 50Hz sinusoid.  It suggests to me an inadequate approach to the design of the audio component!

 

I am still relatively new to this audio forum and still coming to terms with some of the listening experiences that are referred to.  Can you describe the nature of the "mucking up of the sound"?  For example, does a component pick up hash and reproduce it like the sound of the background noise on the AM broadcast band?

Actually, it's quite surprising, the number of audiophiles who can hear noise from switch mode supplies causing problems with DACs, amplifiers, and other non-audio products, yet miraculously the TVs attached to their systems never seem to be the cause of anything!

 

There's an analogy here with power cables. The one area where a clean power supply would be most critical would actually be old turntables where the AC motor takes its timing from the mains - but does anybody ever report an improvement from a power cable with an old turntable? I think I've seen that test reported once with no positive result. (Disclaimer - I haven't searched here for examples, perhaps I should, and I half expect a long set of links posted to show me up...)

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