7 ms·

It would be nice if someone could demonstrate that DSD sounds better than PCM in a double-blind experiment. Just as a sanity check, you could record the PCM fr

It would be nice if someone could demonstrate that DSD sounds better than PCM in a double-blind experiment. Just as a sanity check, you could record the PCM from the DSD output to discover whether PCM is perceptually transparent. Advocates of DSD are often skeptical of double-blind experiments, which itself is a red flag.

busterarm 13y ago
> Advocates of DSD are often skeptical of double-blind experiments, which itself is a red flag. Exactly. There's a lot of wackos out there in the music biz though. People have religious beliefs about certain products/technologies/sounds without any solid reasoning behind it.
- alan_cx 13y ago
  Whats wrong with that? We don't question tastes in art, why audio? I don't need logic or research or the agreement of others, I just know what sounds right to me, and that is perfectly solidly reasonable. Ears are as weird and personal as eyes, as is our interpretation. You wont necessarily hear what I hear. On top of that, over time they change. No need for words like wacko and religious. Unless of course you doing mind if I fire back with a few judgmental words of my own?
  - Dylan16807 13y ago
    I think you have a different sort of 'taste' in mind than busterarm does. It is a very reasonable thing to prefer record over CD. They have different sounds, people have different likes, easy, done. But if someone tells you they prefer the look of HDMI when you use gold-plated wires, they're clearly deceiving themselves, because as a digital signal there is no difference whatsoever. So the important question to ask is whether people can hear the difference. I will accept that some people have better/different ears from others, but the best way to demonstrate that ability is a double-blind test. Your standard is what 'sounds right'. Well, if you can reliably tell me that X technology sounds better than Y technology, without labels on the two sets of headphones in front of you, then great, that's all I wanted. I don't need any kind of research showing that a format is objectively 'better'. I just want someone to show that it's objectively different to human ears. If someone says they have a preference, but doesn't actually prefer either one in a blinded test, then the labels 'wacko' and 'religious' fit.
    - busterarm 13y ago
      Right. I'm trying to refer to the self-deception that people have when it comes to audio gear. A really common example is how many musicians and audiophiles end up buying power filters and claim they make the sound better. Often these people don't need the power filters and you can prove with documentation and test equipment that they a) don't need them and b) aren't doing anything to the sound. Are you playing out live in random clubs? Sure get a power filter (but that's not as important as a surge protector). Are you playing at home with modern wiring and not overloading your circuit? Don't waste your fucking money. So many musicians end up developing biases about what certain equipment is supposed to sound like. There are a few videos floating around comparing guitar amp/cab modeling gear to the real thing. A lot friends of mine have trouble picking them apart or getting them right in a blind listening test. Frequently the model has some tweaks that make it sound better... or a better description would be to say that it sounds more like what the musician expects that gear to sound like. Some amp X was used on such and such album and has Y sound and the model sounds like that amp does on the album. I'm frequently right in these blind tests and I end up telling people is that it's because I don't care about the gear and don't have any preconceived notions about what it should sound like. I just listen to the timbre and make my best guess.
  - derleth 13y ago
    Because Monster Cables use those emotions to rip people off. Unless you really and truly think there's no moral problem with selling cables at a multi-thousand-percent markup based on claims which are trivially disproven, in which case I doubt we'll be able to have a reasonable conversation.
  - bathat 13y ago
    What's wrong wrong with it is simple: The question "Is PCM transparent?" is not subject to taste. It either is or it isn't. If listeners can't tell the difference between a source that is being reproduced from PCM or one that is being reproduced from DSD, then we can objectively state that PCM does not degrade sound quality. You and I can disagree about whether impressionism is a "good" style of painting. The art world spent a good deal of energy debating that point. That is something which is subject to taste. But if you say "yes" and I say "no" to the question of whether van Gogh created his impressionist painting on canvas, then only one of us can be right. In this case, my insistence that van Gogh didn't paint on canvas would put me squarely in the loony or wacko category.
- radicaldreamer 13y ago
  High end audio delivers an experience which cannot be easily quantified for the listener. It's just like wine, most people (even many wine experts) can't tell wines apart, let alone rank them in double blind experiments, but drinking wine, from the presentation to the bottle to the company you're keeping at the time is what brings it together. It could be anything in that bottle at that point, but the emotions of that holistic experience are what matter.
  - afhof 13y ago
    If you are summing up the whole experience rather than the audioformat, then you really don't have anything comparable. If one format really is better (and even that is subjective), then there needs to be a repeatable experiment that proves it.
  - busterarm 13y ago
    Unlike wine, music really comes down to knowledge, experience and training. Sound and our interpretation of it by the human ear have had rigorous study. Much of it is quantifiable. We know the optimum frequency response of our ears is around 85dBSPL, for example. Things that are just peoples perceptions (like "brightness") have technical terms (amplitude of harmonics). Sound engineers aren't doing black magic. If you reduce dynamic range too much through compression you can end up with a sound that people find "boring". I'm sorry but there are things that very quantifiably sound terrible. (I am a musician, I have run live sound and mix my own music.)
    - radicaldreamer 13y ago
      I totally agree, there's certainly going to be stuff that most people, audiophiles included, would consider better or worse. What I mean though is there are certain aspects that can't be reduced to technical terms- like going to listen to a live performance from an artist who isn't going to perform any longer or listening to a piece on a rare, hard to produce system. The value isn't coming directly from the technical aspects of the production for the listener at that point.
- afhof 13y ago
  Its painful sometimes to read audiophile forums. Often you'll see people claim that FLAC audio doesn't sound as good as raw PCM. Some people seem so proud of their ignorance that they ignore the benefits instead of trying to understand.
  - busterarm 13y ago
    That stuff is funny in a sad way but easy to ignore. I find it hardest to deal with the people who think that spending more money on something makes it better. My little $100 tripath amp and the cheap but appropriate speakers that I picked for it absolutely smoke a lot of $3000 amps (and similarly expensive speakers) that I come across and people tend to not believe unless they're blindfolded (and still try to poo-poo it when they find out how little my setup cost). Also it crushes my spirit when people have some $10k HiFi setup and the speaker placement/room accoustics aren't right at all.
    - briancaw2 13y ago
      I believe there's a good bit of psychological evidence that spending more money actually makes you perceive things as better.
      - busterarm 13y ago
        For sure, but that's a cognitive bias. These people go out claiming these things as fact...and unfortunately there's an entire industry out there supporting and benefiting from their claims.
        briancaw2 13y ago
        Right, saying something is better because it's quality - absent price - is better than something else's quality is different than saying something is just plain old better (which it might be just because it's more expensive). Seems to me that there is something people want - a better audio experience. They may actually get that by paying more, but the preferable outcome would be to get better objective quality. In fact, I think it would be preferable to even pay more to get the better objective product and know you weren't duped. I think there is probably a market for consulting: value1 = objective_value1 + value_of_knowing_you_werent_duped value2 = objective_value2 + cognitive_bias_for_paying_more If it's true that objective_value2 is actually << objective_value1, and cognitive_bias_for_paying_more is not too significant, value_of_knowing_you_werent_duped could be a lucrative business.
- ChuckMcM 13y ago
  I loved that fact that Monster Audio cable was designed with an 'arrow' telling you which end should be on the speaker and which at the amplifier because they were optimized for sound flowing "to" the speaker.
  - afhof 13y ago
    It doesn't even stop at audio cable. Ever seen those "High quality HDMI cables? The bits on THOSE wires are purer than any other 1s and 0s. There is real money to be made in selling the emperor his clothes.
    - lsc 13y ago
      What I find interesting is the positioning. Fry's has the $150 hdmi cable at eye level, then a $15 hdmi cable a little bit below that, and then on the bottom shelf, you can dig around and find a $1.50 hdmi cable. I suspect that the $150 cable is there to make the $15 cable look like the "reasonable" or "middle of the road" choice. (from experience, the $1.50 cable works just fine.)
      - busterarm 13y ago
        You're lucky. Back when I still worked in an electronics store, the $15 was your only other option. Except back then it was a $30-45 cable. Aside: Anybody else remember $50 6' USB A-B cables?
        deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
        lsc 13y ago
        I bet best buy and office depot still have $15 as the minimum price for a cable. Last time I really needed an ethernet cable and everything but office depot was closed.... I paid like $15 for a 6' cable. I think that's just the best buy/office depot "minimum price" Fry's is one of those places that targets, well, me; They are more expensive than monoprice, but not by so much that I would delay a project to get the monoprice price. I think they are pretty good at pricing high enough that they are making some money (I mean, I /expect/ to pay more in person) but low enough that I can still go in and buy a hundred cables for a project without it being thousands of dollars.
Spooky23 13y ago
I sold electronics in college. The only difference I could ever detect was the money that I made off the sale. Audiophiles are all about impressing rich friends with the amount of money they wasted. It's just like the corporate VP who spends an extra $40k on a V-12 Mercedes that is used to commute 2 minutes to work in rush hour traffic.
- ekianjo 13y ago
  It's not because you don't have the hear that nobody has it. That's perception bias at best.
- WalterSear 13y ago
  I worked as a recording engineer you definitely can detect a difference between audio gear. However, it's likely that you weren't selling products for an audience that actually cared.
  - busterarm 13y ago
    But those performance differences are measurable and are independent of price. There's data (and better yet, graphics) that can be supplied to help explain those differences but they're almost never presented to the salesman or the customer...if either is knowledgeable to interpret them anyway. Audiophiles (more specifically audiophile communities and publications), traditionally do have a tendency to prefer gear that his higher in price-range/markup over gear that may be better but isn't. Reviews of products that say "hey, this product that costs <$250 is measurably better than this 5-star product that costs 10x as much" are rare and make waves when they happen but such product differences always exist.
r0h1n 13y ago
Disclosure: I'm an 'agnostic' audiophile. Meaning I optimize my music experience as much as possible (given time, space & money constraints) - FLAC -- wired-only streaming -- audiophile grade sound card -- decent & no-nonsense stereo amplifier -- floorstanders...but I draw my own line when things like power conditioners & gold/jelly cables come on. Yet, I call myself an agnostic because I keep myself open to the possibility that some audiophiles might get true value from their esoteric equipment choices. Appreciation of any art is necessarily subjective. Double blind tests have no use there at a personal level, unless you're an academic or a critic because you'd use them to analyze or critique other's choices. Why should I, or any reasonably intelligent person with his/her own biases and choices, make decisions by artificially isolating some of their senses (sight, smell etc.) via double-blind tests? The idea itself is preposterous and insulting. Worse, if a double-blind test tells me option A was 'better' than option 'B', and I change my preference after that, was it even my choice? There's a world of subjective and personal choices we make everyday from wine to clothing brands to books to music to personal technology. Are we confident that we can duplicate those choices via double-blind tests? I don't think so. Sure, I might try a fee tests once in a while to 'validate' or 'challenge' my own choices, but I'm never going to allow the tests to alter my individual choices.
- dietrichepp 13y ago
  > The idea itself is preposterous and insulting. I'm not asking you to make decisions according to my criteria. I can even sympathize with the multisensory approach: I like the tactile experience that CDs offer, for example, and only reluctantly switched to downloaded music in 2013 because I simply couldn't find physical copies of the music I wanted. However, you seem to misunderstand the meaning of "double-blind". It does not mean "blind" in the literal sense. It only means that neither the experimenter nor the subject are consciously aware of which piece of equipment is under test. The reason I like making some choices based on double-blind tests is because I know I have a ton of cognitive distortions. I want to believe that the more expensive amplifier is better, I want to believe that the open-source codec is more transparent, and I want to believe that my gear is better than my friend's gear. Sometimes (not always) I actually want to know the answers to these questions. So, science! I'm all for embracing subjectivity, but if you are selling me a $1,000 or $10,000 audio system, I want some more objective justification that it is worth the cost. Or, put another way, you may want all of your vinyl blessed by the pope, but I'm not going to pay extra for it. > Worse, if a double-blind test tells me option A was 'better' than option 'B', and I change my preference after that, was it even my choice? This is pretty esoteric stuff. I can say that my goals are closer to "I want a decent sound system without paying through the nose", not "I want some kind of existential assurance that I used my free will to make this particular decision." I change my preferences all the time, based on all sorts of internal and external data. Or, put another way, the person that exists five minutes from now may have my name, but he's not me, and I trust him to make his own decisions.

busterarm 13y ago

> Advocates of DSD are often skeptical of double-blind experiments, which itself is a red flag. Exactly. There's a lot of wackos out there in the music biz though. People have religious beliefs about certain products/technologies/sounds without any solid reasoning behind it.

alan_cx 13y ago
Whats wrong with that? We don't question tastes in art, why audio? I don't need logic or research or the agreement of others, I just know what sounds right to me, and that is perfectly solidly reasonable. Ears are as weird and personal as eyes, as is our interpretation. You wont necessarily hear what I hear. On top of that, over time they change. No need for words like wacko and religious. Unless of course you doing mind if I fire back with a few judgmental words of my own?
- Dylan16807 13y ago
  I think you have a different sort of 'taste' in mind than busterarm does. It is a very reasonable thing to prefer record over CD. They have different sounds, people have different likes, easy, done. But if someone tells you they prefer the look of HDMI when you use gold-plated wires, they're clearly deceiving themselves, because as a digital signal there is no difference whatsoever. So the important question to ask is whether people can hear the difference. I will accept that some people have better/different ears from others, but the best way to demonstrate that ability is a double-blind test. Your standard is what 'sounds right'. Well, if you can reliably tell me that X technology sounds better than Y technology, without labels on the two sets of headphones in front of you, then great, that's all I wanted. I don't need any kind of research showing that a format is objectively 'better'. I just want someone to show that it's objectively different to human ears. If someone says they have a preference, but doesn't actually prefer either one in a blinded test, then the labels 'wacko' and 'religious' fit.
  - busterarm 13y ago
    Right. I'm trying to refer to the self-deception that people have when it comes to audio gear. A really common example is how many musicians and audiophiles end up buying power filters and claim they make the sound better. Often these people don't need the power filters and you can prove with documentation and test equipment that they a) don't need them and b) aren't doing anything to the sound. Are you playing out live in random clubs? Sure get a power filter (but that's not as important as a surge protector). Are you playing at home with modern wiring and not overloading your circuit? Don't waste your fucking money. So many musicians end up developing biases about what certain equipment is supposed to sound like. There are a few videos floating around comparing guitar amp/cab modeling gear to the real thing. A lot friends of mine have trouble picking them apart or getting them right in a blind listening test. Frequently the model has some tweaks that make it sound better... or a better description would be to say that it sounds more like what the musician expects that gear to sound like. Some amp X was used on such and such album and has Y sound and the model sounds like that amp does on the album. I'm frequently right in these blind tests and I end up telling people is that it's because I don't care about the gear and don't have any preconceived notions about what it should sound like. I just listen to the timbre and make my best guess.
- derleth 13y ago
  Because Monster Cables use those emotions to rip people off. Unless you really and truly think there's no moral problem with selling cables at a multi-thousand-percent markup based on claims which are trivially disproven, in which case I doubt we'll be able to have a reasonable conversation.
- bathat 13y ago
  What's wrong wrong with it is simple: The question "Is PCM transparent?" is not subject to taste. It either is or it isn't. If listeners can't tell the difference between a source that is being reproduced from PCM or one that is being reproduced from DSD, then we can objectively state that PCM does not degrade sound quality. You and I can disagree about whether impressionism is a "good" style of painting. The art world spent a good deal of energy debating that point. That is something which is subject to taste. But if you say "yes" and I say "no" to the question of whether van Gogh created his impressionist painting on canvas, then only one of us can be right. In this case, my insistence that van Gogh didn't paint on canvas would put me squarely in the loony or wacko category.
radicaldreamer 13y ago
High end audio delivers an experience which cannot be easily quantified for the listener. It's just like wine, most people (even many wine experts) can't tell wines apart, let alone rank them in double blind experiments, but drinking wine, from the presentation to the bottle to the company you're keeping at the time is what brings it together. It could be anything in that bottle at that point, but the emotions of that holistic experience are what matter.
- afhof 13y ago
  If you are summing up the whole experience rather than the audioformat, then you really don't have anything comparable. If one format really is better (and even that is subjective), then there needs to be a repeatable experiment that proves it.
- busterarm 13y ago
  Unlike wine, music really comes down to knowledge, experience and training. Sound and our interpretation of it by the human ear have had rigorous study. Much of it is quantifiable. We know the optimum frequency response of our ears is around 85dBSPL, for example. Things that are just peoples perceptions (like "brightness") have technical terms (amplitude of harmonics). Sound engineers aren't doing black magic. If you reduce dynamic range too much through compression you can end up with a sound that people find "boring". I'm sorry but there are things that very quantifiably sound terrible. (I am a musician, I have run live sound and mix my own music.)
  - radicaldreamer 13y ago
    I totally agree, there's certainly going to be stuff that most people, audiophiles included, would consider better or worse. What I mean though is there are certain aspects that can't be reduced to technical terms- like going to listen to a live performance from an artist who isn't going to perform any longer or listening to a piece on a rare, hard to produce system. The value isn't coming directly from the technical aspects of the production for the listener at that point.
afhof 13y ago
Its painful sometimes to read audiophile forums. Often you'll see people claim that FLAC audio doesn't sound as good as raw PCM. Some people seem so proud of their ignorance that they ignore the benefits instead of trying to understand.
- busterarm 13y ago
  That stuff is funny in a sad way but easy to ignore. I find it hardest to deal with the people who think that spending more money on something makes it better. My little $100 tripath amp and the cheap but appropriate speakers that I picked for it absolutely smoke a lot of $3000 amps (and similarly expensive speakers) that I come across and people tend to not believe unless they're blindfolded (and still try to poo-poo it when they find out how little my setup cost). Also it crushes my spirit when people have some $10k HiFi setup and the speaker placement/room accoustics aren't right at all.
  - briancaw2 13y ago
    I believe there's a good bit of psychological evidence that spending more money actually makes you perceive things as better.
    - busterarm 13y ago
      For sure, but that's a cognitive bias. These people go out claiming these things as fact...and unfortunately there's an entire industry out there supporting and benefiting from their claims.
      - briancaw2 13y ago
        Right, saying something is better because it's quality - absent price - is better than something else's quality is different than saying something is just plain old better (which it might be just because it's more expensive). Seems to me that there is something people want - a better audio experience. They may actually get that by paying more, but the preferable outcome would be to get better objective quality. In fact, I think it would be preferable to even pay more to get the better objective product and know you weren't duped. I think there is probably a market for consulting: value1 = objective_value1 + value_of_knowing_you_werent_duped value2 = objective_value2 + cognitive_bias_for_paying_more If it's true that objective_value2 is actually << objective_value1, and cognitive_bias_for_paying_more is not too significant, value_of_knowing_you_werent_duped could be a lucrative business.
ChuckMcM 13y ago
I loved that fact that Monster Audio cable was designed with an 'arrow' telling you which end should be on the speaker and which at the amplifier because they were optimized for sound flowing "to" the speaker.
- afhof 13y ago
  It doesn't even stop at audio cable. Ever seen those "High quality HDMI cables? The bits on THOSE wires are purer than any other 1s and 0s. There is real money to be made in selling the emperor his clothes.
  - lsc 13y ago
    What I find interesting is the positioning. Fry's has the $150 hdmi cable at eye level, then a $15 hdmi cable a little bit below that, and then on the bottom shelf, you can dig around and find a $1.50 hdmi cable. I suspect that the $150 cable is there to make the $15 cable look like the "reasonable" or "middle of the road" choice. (from experience, the $1.50 cable works just fine.)
    - busterarm 13y ago
      You're lucky. Back when I still worked in an electronics store, the $15 was your only other option. Except back then it was a $30-45 cable. Aside: Anybody else remember $50 6' USB A-B cables?
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
      - lsc 13y ago
        I bet best buy and office depot still have $15 as the minimum price for a cable. Last time I really needed an ethernet cable and everything but office depot was closed.... I paid like $15 for a 6' cable. I think that's just the best buy/office depot "minimum price" Fry's is one of those places that targets, well, me; They are more expensive than monoprice, but not by so much that I would delay a project to get the monoprice price. I think they are pretty good at pricing high enough that they are making some money (I mean, I /expect/ to pay more in person) but low enough that I can still go in and buy a hundred cables for a project without it being thousands of dollars.

Spooky23 13y ago

I sold electronics in college. The only difference I could ever detect was the money that I made off the sale. Audiophiles are all about impressing rich friends with the amount of money they wasted. It's just like the corporate VP who spends an extra $40k on a V-12 Mercedes that is used to commute 2 minutes to work in rush hour traffic.

ekianjo 13y ago
It's not because you don't have the hear that nobody has it. That's perception bias at best.
WalterSear 13y ago
I worked as a recording engineer you definitely can detect a difference between audio gear. However, it's likely that you weren't selling products for an audience that actually cared.
- busterarm 13y ago
  But those performance differences are measurable and are independent of price. There's data (and better yet, graphics) that can be supplied to help explain those differences but they're almost never presented to the salesman or the customer...if either is knowledgeable to interpret them anyway. Audiophiles (more specifically audiophile communities and publications), traditionally do have a tendency to prefer gear that his higher in price-range/markup over gear that may be better but isn't. Reviews of products that say "hey, this product that costs <$250 is measurably better than this 5-star product that costs 10x as much" are rare and make waves when they happen but such product differences always exist.

r0h1n 13y ago

Disclosure: I'm an 'agnostic' audiophile. Meaning I optimize my music experience as much as possible (given time, space & money constraints) - FLAC -- wired-only streaming -- audiophile grade sound card -- decent & no-nonsense stereo amplifier -- floorstanders...but I draw my own line when things like power conditioners & gold/jelly cables come on. Yet, I call myself an agnostic because I keep myself open to the possibility that some audiophiles might get true value from their esoteric equipment choices. Appreciation of any art is necessarily subjective. Double blind tests have no use there at a personal level, unless you're an academic or a critic because you'd use them to analyze or critique other's choices. Why should I, or any reasonably intelligent person with his/her own biases and choices, make decisions by artificially isolating some of their senses (sight, smell etc.) via double-blind tests? The idea itself is preposterous and insulting. Worse, if a double-blind test tells me option A was 'better' than option 'B', and I change my preference after that, was it even my choice? There's a world of subjective and personal choices we make everyday from wine to clothing brands to books to music to personal technology. Are we confident that we can duplicate those choices via double-blind tests? I don't think so. Sure, I might try a fee tests once in a while to 'validate' or 'challenge' my own choices, but I'm never going to allow the tests to alter my individual choices.

dietrichepp 13y ago
> The idea itself is preposterous and insulting. I'm not asking you to make decisions according to my criteria. I can even sympathize with the multisensory approach: I like the tactile experience that CDs offer, for example, and only reluctantly switched to downloaded music in 2013 because I simply couldn't find physical copies of the music I wanted. However, you seem to misunderstand the meaning of "double-blind". It does not mean "blind" in the literal sense. It only means that neither the experimenter nor the subject are consciously aware of which piece of equipment is under test. The reason I like making some choices based on double-blind tests is because I know I have a ton of cognitive distortions. I want to believe that the more expensive amplifier is better, I want to believe that the open-source codec is more transparent, and I want to believe that my gear is better than my friend's gear. Sometimes (not always) I actually want to know the answers to these questions. So, science! I'm all for embracing subjectivity, but if you are selling me a $1,000 or $10,000 audio system, I want some more objective justification that it is worth the cost. Or, put another way, you may want all of your vinyl blessed by the pope, but I'm not going to pay extra for it. > Worse, if a double-blind test tells me option A was 'better' than option 'B', and I change my preference after that, was it even my choice? This is pretty esoteric stuff. I can say that my goals are closer to "I want a decent sound system without paying through the nose", not "I want some kind of existential assurance that I used my free will to make this particular decision." I change my preferences all the time, based on all sorts of internal and external data. Or, put another way, the person that exists five minutes from now may have my name, but he's not me, and I trust him to make his own decisions.