Indeed.

You should listen to more vinyl. You can sometimes hear a bit of mistracking but still enjoy the music.

''That's why we have you sir!'' to the man who considers 100dB SPL a comfortable listening volume...

i guess Im kinda off topic but does anyone know a good website to stream new series online?

:) That is a very kind way to put it.

Are you sure you want to be a trained listener? You will start to hear artifacts that maybe are not bothering you right now. :)

Evening Amir I am definitely interested if you could teach and guide me And even would love to pass on the knowledge later on

@@AudioScienceReview it would be amazing, you should absolutely do it!

@@AudioScienceReview A bit of; Be careful what you wish for?

@@AudioScienceReview I thought about this a few years ago. I decided I didn’t want to know, I’d rather just enjoy music.

Thank you kindly.

Ah, that is very kind of you. I am glad you find these longer formats useful. I am so worried about them getting long.

@@AudioScienceReview A long educational video vs one that say "trust me, this is better cause I say so". I'll take the long one every time. Keep up the exceptional work!

@@Adrian-jp2kt Amen to that! Amir does a good job of getting the info out without pandering which is fantastic.

And it is delightful for me to read such comments. Thank you for sharing.

Super. Thanks Sam.

Well said. As humans, we are optimistic beings, thinking we are right far more than we really are!

Yes! Amir passes the tests because he focuses on very tiny details and repeats them over and over. You are not going to do this in normal listening!

Thanks for watching Mathew.

Thank you. I am glad you are getting something out of it.

:)

@Chris Lujiez thats the point. We are talking about so small differences that those wont do any good for you at the first place. Like DACs. Its the last thing you need to upgrade. A 200€ DAC will be good enough for the majority of system's. When you hit the last stop of end game. Like on headphone over 2000€. Etc.

@@Thevikingcam Honestly a headphone past £500 isn't worth it for sound alone providing its a well tuned one.

@@Jordonater what?? Are you kidding? Right? Hahah... Have you ever heard STAX 009 or ABYSS?

People literally cries when they hear their favorite song from those. And they are not audiophiles but normal people. Many of my friends are in disbelieve how headphones can produce sounds line that and they are looking around the room of someone is actually playing instruments in the room

@@Thevikingcam I doubt the difference is that big. Amir tested one the Abyss headphones and he heard nothing special about them at all. They cant even tune upper mids properly.

Indeed. Consumer hifi people have this impression that pro people 100% follow science. As you indicate, the same confusion exist there about what is real and what is not.

Diamond Rio? Man that brings back memories. i wonder how many people know that the iPod is distant descendent of that player.

Thanks. Will do.

Will do. Thank you Luigi.

Thank you so much.

Thanks for the kind remark and feedback. I need such input to decide what future videos to do.

@@AudioScienceReview while the debunking ones are certainly fun, the videos based more in education are the ones which i personally find the most appealing.

My pleasure. Thanks for watching.

Agreed and thank you so much.

Thanks Peter. Can't believe how many of you appreciated it. When I finished it I thought for sure I would get a lot of negative comments about it being too long, boring, etc.

Ah, very kind of you. Thanks for watching Reiner.

Thank you Nick. These are topics I have discussed online in text for 10+ years but I am finding that video format is so much more effective in conveying them.

I am glad. Thanks for watching.

@@AudioScienceReview Was talking to my far more knowledgeable audio friend, and he remarked that even IF someone had golden enough ears to be able to generally hear a difference in the noise floor between 16 and 24 bits, the self-noise and natural distortion of most consumer-available audio equipment would overshadow that difference anyhow. And as we already know, tracks at 96000khz, besides having content that's audibly imperceptible, suffers from the intermodulation problem, as fabfilter and Dan Worrall's wonderful demo shows: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/Y9BzqqykuZa8aIE.html

Ah sure. I was thinking of doing that. The only barrier is that I don't do any edits of my videos. It is one take and upload. This means there will be dead periods where I wait for tests to load and run. Wonder if people will put up with this.

Thanks Denis.

Thank you. Appreciate the feedback very much.

Sure, I will do one on that. :)

Indeed. I routinely get questions on the forum if someone should upgrade from an already great DAC to even a better one and my answer is always no. Speakers are so important.

@@AudioScienceReview so true. I point out that sound reproduction is about the room, speakers, electronics and media. The lowest performing part will limit your sound. It is amazing how many people are obsessed with electronics over speakers and the room when most people could get so much more from the room and speakers.

It is great to hear you tolerate 44 minutes of me. :)

Yes. We tested audiophiles at Microsoft with respect to lossy compression artifacts and they did no better than general public and well below our trained listeners.

I hated MP3 128 encoded files in the "old days" because I could tell they sometimes had weird artifacts and some instruments seemed muffled (I'm no expert so I guess that's the compression on some audible frequencies). When I could, I would always chose VBR with the maximum quality possible and those were indistinguishable from plain CD quality.

Exactly, for me too! I'm thinking for year's now that our hearing memory is really bad. I'm thinking of that every time i see a headphone review where the reviewer compares two or more headphones from memory. It's bullshit, and now i know why. Thanks Amir a lot!

@@PappLacc That's nothing! I saw a KZfaq video where violinists were playing their million-dollar Stradivarius blindfold verse a copycat that cost maybe $1,000 and they couldn't tell one from the other and these were very seasoned violinists!🤯🤯🤯 It was nuts. A lot of the times the chose the fake as their own $$$$$$$" violin.

No you wouldn't because the output is not an audio file at certain sample rate. It is just data that point. Is this what you were asking?

@@AudioScienceReview I see, I’m trying to understand what happens under the hood rather than the actual effect on the music. I guess I will need to read more about compression in general.

Great to see you experiment. On your suggestion, devices can run out of sync quickly due to their clocks drifting so such comparisons become hard.

@@AudioScienceReview Very good point sir. Thank you. I far too often forget the finer details like passives drifting due to heat and load. However, I think a test like strip charted audio output for a side by side comparison would be the definitive proof of audio qualities and quantities.

The artifacts are indeed small.

I researched that and turned out it was a fish story. It was just an audiophile meet and someone suggested to use a coat hanger and they did. It was not any kind of format blind test and such. Based on that though, I did test coat hangers and found them to be quite poor conductors: www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/when-12-gauge-wire-is-not-12-gauge.3/

I was hoping to do a deep dive on BT codecs but I am stuck not having a convenient transmitter that lets me control all the parameters. I have done straight measurements of them which shows bandwidth limiting and such: www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/qudelix-5k-bluetooth-dac-headphone-amp.17386/

@@AudioScienceReview ah ok, thanks for the reply. Will watch it now. I’m currently waiting for my amplifier to be returned and then I’m going to try and blind test AAC, aptx and aptxHD if possible. Also going to compare vs wireless streaming from the same amplifier. I suspect I won’t fair anywhere nearly as well as you did here!! 😀

Thanks. I should do a video on your question. :) Answer is no, I measure first, listen second. The reason for my listening tests is not to give you a controlled listening test of the speaker. That would need to be a multi-way test against other speakers. And at any rate, the test is sighted whether I look at measurements first or second (these non-measurement biases are far stronger by the way). I listen because I want to verify that the measurements are telling us what they seem to be saying. Say I see a dip from 1 to 2 kHz. I listen to my reference tracks and form an opinion (without measurements in front of my by the way). I then apply an inverse EQ to fill that whole and then do an AB. I sometimes do this AB test blind. If the EQ improves the sound then I assume our interpretation of measurements is correct. If not, then I investigate more. In other words, listening tests are not presented independent of measurements. They are part of the measurement suite. I think the concept of someone giving us subjective listening tests of a speaker sighted without measurement is flawed. You are relying on them being god like in knowing everything about tonality of a speaker and giving you a perfect opinion. I am good, but not that good. :) Why would you trust my opinion of listening to a speaker anyway? What makes you put weight on that assessment? Is it a test of manhood to see if you can catch me saying something that doesn't agree with measurements? With measurements, I am a compass. I know what the speaker is doing that is out of norm. The listening tests *and* equalizations are then there to confirm and pinpoint the audibility of those artifacts. Is it a perfect process? No. Per above, I am doing the test sighted so there are a number of factors which could pollute the results. It is just that I feel the confirmation via listening tests need to be there. Otherwise you all will be subjected to do the same if you buy a speaker based on measurements alone. A bonus which comes out of my listening tests is equalization that you can then apply to the speaker without doing the work that I do, or the experience I have.

@@AudioScienceReview well you kind of say it above, "if the EQ improves the sound then I assume our interpretation of of measurements is correct, if not I investigate more." - in an objective world the measurements are gold or not?- why do we listen? it assumes flat frequency response and minimal distortions are the absolute sound. Not to be argumentative, I found the video very good. But it does make wonder what the value of trained listening is to the consumer, you have 20+ dacs in your list of measured dacs all measuring within a point of whatever metric you want to establish, SINAD, etc. Are they then all interchangeable? Or are there differences in sound? Is a purely distortion free and artifact free dac desirable or do some distortions sound better psychoacoustically? I can appreciate that this has been a moving target since the tech has changed enormously and maybe we have hit the point where there is not much more we can get out of a dac and all of our old comparisons that showed differences in sound were on dacs that measured far worse. And I'm happy to spend less!:) if I don't have to...thanks for the videos.

You need to go to a high-end stereo store and have some AB testing done and you will tell differences in amplifiers easily.

I have not taken any polarity tests so don't know. How as the polarity changed?

​@@AudioScienceReview It looks like they just inverted the polarity of one sample and kept the polarity original of the other. I imagine that the two samples would sum to zero. It was to simulate a piece of gear with inverted polarity, which used to be strangely common and still happens to some products like the original Topping E30. You can find the Absolute Polarity Blind Listening Test at audiocheck, sadly youtube really doesn't want to let me post links here. The way I am able to tell is the little pause after the fourth strum when there is a bit of a "slam" sound as if something was hit. It is subtle but in the inverted sample it is boomier and overdriven - I compose music as a hobby sometimes and it sounds to me like using a tube amp simulator and cranking the distortion too high. It sounds grainy and unpleasant, while the original sample (in that one moment) sounds leaner and cleaner. But like I said, if you removed that one moment, I wouldn't be able to tell at all. Here's a recording I did a while ago to show what exactly I was listening for and how I could tell: streamable . com/pn4nqv (remove the spaces)

In most cases, headphones are more revealing due to blocking of the noise, and generally lower distortion. Sometimes though bass is impacted and there, speakers are better for obvious reasons. In research headphones dominate for hearing small artifacts.

For a portable DAC, yes. There is a tempotec and someone was trying to get one for me to test.

@@AudioScienceReview thanks for the reply I appreciate it

Hi, Did you match output voltage for do your comparison between DAC with digital attenuation Vs an active preamp?

Hi there. I personally would avoid a pre-amp if you have a DAC with volume control. The only reason to use a pre-amp is if you have multiple inputs. I would NOT use them with a DAC without volume control. Software volume controls never do it for me.

Thanks for the replies. Not sure about the voltage, the difference is night & day though. I'm a vinyl guy at heart. I'm not a purist, I just have a lot of records so don't jump on me! I've got a phono stage & even that sounds better to me through a preamp than direct to the power amp (phono has volume control). I've stated to explore a lot more music through streaming & have started to listen to digital music a lot more recently. My wife likes classical music & the amount available & quality through streaming is astounding, it has been very eye opening & I'm really enjoying it myself! My DAC (Nord dac & streamer) is as basic as it gets but still sounds very good, but it's digital volume control. I was looking at ATC actives but I'm going to audition some Dutch & Dutch 8c when the UK finally opens. I'm fully sold that very clever people who do this for a living can amp match better than me. I was just wondering if I could use a streamer & also my phono stage directly into them without the need for a preamp, & would that be better. Really enjoying the videos & learning lots.

@@rocco036 "Not sure about the voltage but night and day difference". Well that's enough for me. You definitely can't evaluate gears that way. To do proper comparaison level must be the same. What I see there is your comparaison volume control behaviour and certainly (absolutely) not sound quality. You need to level match both and blind test for valid comparaison. It's like you were comparing two cars with the opportunity to drive one must faster than the other and go claim it's better.😉 You need a a phono preamp for the D&S 8C anyway.

?🤔

You are not supposed to ask me hard questions. :) The problem with laptop DACs is that often they are so bad where the system activity bleeds into their output. If so, then that is easy to rule out. A superb external DAC can be had for $99 so do we really need to justify it?