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Topic: Audio Hardware with Blind Tested Sonic Signature (Read 80184 times) previous topic - next topic
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Audio Hardware with Blind Tested Sonic Signature

As a general category, which hardware exhibits sound differences that remain so after the usual controlled blind testing?
My experience and research indicates to me that the following don't:
1. Modern hifi solid state 2 channel amplifiers
2. Commodity class cables of adequate gauge and construction
3. Exotica such as isolation platforms, power cables, cable supports and others.
Speakers certainly do - and can also inflict a signature on upstream components like amps if they drive them to clip/distort, which is perhaps the reason why the belief in amps having sonic signatures is so strong.
What about DACs? My experience with them is much less than with amps, but I haven't found audible differences between music from a 2011 iPod classic, a SACD player with a supposedly high end DAC, and Sonos streaming boxes, all wired into the same amp/speaker set up, playing the same music via different media.
I am familiar with the case for all amps being indistinguishable under controlled testing, but I haven't heard that said as categorically about DACs. Have DACs by now reached the maturity stage where good enough DACs are mass produced and cheap, and paying more for exotic ones is for reasons other than sound quality? Modern amps reached that stage some decades ago, when did DACs get to this state - if they have?
Leaving vinyl out, is there any category that I haven't listed?

Audio Hardware with Blind Tested Sonic Signature

Reply #1 –
Right! The three most important things are speakers, speakers, and speakers!  And,  you need enough power to drive them.    You previously mentioned acoustics yourself.  I've had my speakers in a dance hall a couple of times and they sound much better there than in my living room.

Of course, an equalizer can correct some speaker & room deficiencies, or it can be used to change the sound to your taste.  And, it makes a change you can really hear.  If you ever want to listen to surround sound, or if you want to enhance stereo recordings with Dolby Pro Logic II Soundfield surround effects, a 5.1 channel system can make a BIG difference.    (Audiophile purists wouldn't want to alter 2-channel stereo, but converting it to surround sound is a difference you can really hear!)

DACs & ADCs are generally better than human hearing.  Some of the 1st CD players had DACs that were better than human hearing.  There's an expensive high-end DAC that uses a high-end DAC chip, and that high-end chip costs about $5.    There's more to a DAC than the chip, but the point is that its cheap & easy to build a good DAC with modern electronics.  And, you don't need a high-end $5 DAC chip to make a good DAC.    If you are listening to "high resolution" audio, you might want a 24-bit/96kHz DAC, but you are not likely to hear a difference compared to a 16-bit DAC.

Some soundcards pick-up noise from the computer's electronics so they can be less than perfect.  Sometimes a soundcard (or headphone-out on a laptop) cannot drive headphones properly because of impedance issues that cause frequency response variations and/or they can't drive headphones loud enough.  In that case, a headphone amplifier may help.

File compression can be non-transparent.    MP3 & AAC can be very good, but there are "killer samples" that are difficult to compress and sometimes low bitrate (low quality) compression is used, especially for streaming or internet-hosted audio.

On the audio production side, different microphones sound different and there are all kinds of production decisions that affect sound quality.  Many modern recordings are over dynamically-compressed and even clipped (The Loudness War).

Audio Hardware with Blind Tested Sonic Signature

Reply #2 –
Quote from: DVDdoug on
Right! The three most important things are speakers, speakers, and speakers!  And,  you need enough power to drive them.    You previously mentioned acoustics yourself.  I've had my speakers in a dance hall a couple of times and they sound much better there than in my living room.

Of course, an equalizer can correct some speaker & room deficiencies, or it can be used to change the sound to your taste.  And, it makes a change you can really hear.  If you ever want to listen to surround sound, or if you want to enhance stereo recordings with Dolby Pro Logic II Soundfield surround effects, a 5.1 channel system can make a BIG difference.    (Audiophile purists wouldn't want to alter 2-channel stereo, but converting it to surround sound is a difference you can really hear!)

DACs & ADCs are generally better than human hearing.  Some of the 1st CD players had DACs that were better than human hearing.  There's an expensive high-end DAC that uses a high-end DAC chip, and that high-end chip costs about $5.    There's more to a DAC than the chip, but the point is that its cheap & easy to build a good DAC with modern electronics.  And, you don't need a high-end $5 DAC chip to make a good DAC.    If you are listening to "high resolution" audio, you might want a 24-bit/96kHz DAC, but you are not likely to hear a difference compared to a 16-bit DAC.

Some soundcards pick-up noise from the computer's electronics so they can be less than perfect.  Sometimes a soundcard (or headphone-out on a laptop) cannot drive headphones properly because of impedance issues that cause frequency response variations and/or they can't drive headphones loud enough.  In that case, a headphone amplifier may help.

File compression can be non-transparent.    MP3 & AAC can be very good, but there are "killer samples" that are difficult to compress and sometimes low bitrate (low quality) compression is used, especially for streaming or internet-hosted audio.

On the audio production side, different microphones sound different and there are all kinds of production decisions that affect sound quality.  Many modern recordings are over dynamically-compressed and even clipped (The Loudness War).

Thanks. That is about in line with what I have come to believe.
I would say the big influencers on SQ now are performance/mastering quality, speaker quality/placement and room acoustics. I classify the signal shaping of the kind you refer to in the DSP category for managing room response - indeed some DACs do that too with their filters, but then we aren't talking of just DAC functionality.
Speaker quality and room acoustics management via DSP remains something with considerable untapped potential - but I hear you to say that the DAC piece of the signal chain is now as much a solved problem as 2 channel amplification is.

Audio Hardware with Blind Tested Sonic Signature

Reply #3 –
Note that some DACs have had issues with premature clipping. This nuForce will clip about 1 dB below FS, presumably due to a badly-designed output stage. A Chinese AD1955 based DAC was found to be even worse and clip at about -6 dBFS, apparently due to issues with the output stage supplies. You can usually work around these things but you have to be aware of them.

Most any competently designed DAC should be just fine, however. Even a run-of-the-mill Realtek onboard codec will have very low periodic passband ripple and more than adequate distortion and noise. If that doesn't scream "solved problem" I don't know what does. (Things are less rosy in the recording department. You may also find that consumer gadgets with audio low on the list of priorities may use general-purpose PWM outputs for a throwback to the bad old days.)

Obviously there still are some scenarios in which the dynamic range of a standard issue DAC just won't cut it, usually involving a lack of analog dynamic range management behind it or specialty applications.

As far as the thread subject goes, there's always "effects devices" of one kind or another (but obviously those are expected to do something).

Audio Hardware with Blind Tested Sonic Signature

Reply #4 –
Quote from: stephan_g on
Note that some DACs have had issues with premature clipping. This nuForce will clip about 1 dB below FS, presumably due to a badly-designed output stage. A Chinese AD1955 based DAC was found to be even worse and clip at about -6 dBFS, apparently due to issues with the output stage supplies. You can usually work around these things but you have to be aware of them.

Most any competently designed DAC should be just fine, however.

That would be true of amps too, you can still get lousy ones. But getting good enough ones isn't a research subject, nor does it involve spending more money than on that required to buy the ones made by the well known mass market players, many of who are now including a DAC in their amp. No reason to believe that these DACs would not be just as capable for the function.
So one can now put down the highly priced DACs in the same category of subjective exotica as well?

Audio Hardware with Blind Tested Sonic Signature

Reply #5 –
What is the experience of people here with speaker stands? Once they get the speakers to the right height, and are safe/stable enough for the speaker weight, does anything else matter?
In places where no stand is possible, I have obtained good results with the speakers on a shelf that allows decent space around them, placed at the front edge of the shelf such that there isn't any interference from the shelf surface.
I have not been able to do any direct comparison though, I haven't found any practical way to do that.

Audio Hardware with Blind Tested Sonic Signature

Reply #6 –
Quote from: KumarK on
What is the experience of people here with speaker stands? Once they get the speakers to the right height, and are safe/stable enough for the speaker weight, does anything else matter?
In places where no stand is possible, I have obtained good results with the speakers on a shelf that allows decent space around them, placed at the front edge of the shelf such that there isn't any interference from the shelf surface.
I have not been able to do any direct comparison though, I haven't found any practical way to do that.

Depends on the speaker - the stand option would be better if you had bass problems from having the speakers too close to the back wall on a shelf, and would offer more options in positioning in general. But speakers on stands are not always an option.

Personally, I'm not so keen on both speakers being on the same support, but if it was solid enough, it wouldn't be a problem.

Audio Hardware with Blind Tested Sonic Signature

Reply #7 –
Quote from: stephan_g on
Most any competently designed DAC should be just fine, however.

One reason for this could be that any subtle but audible difference may be lost in the noise floor of even a quiet listening room. Would a DBT using high quality headphones have a different result justifying claims from "better" quality DACs? Are there any such reported instances?
I don't like headphones so this is an academic question as far as I am concerned, but it would be interesting to know.

Audio Hardware with Blind Tested Sonic Signature

Reply #8 –
Quote from: KumarK on
Quote from: stephan_g on
Most any competently designed DAC should be just fine, however.

One reason for this could be that any subtle but audible difference may be lost in the noise floor of even a quiet listening room. Would a DBT using high quality headphones have a different result justifying claims from "better" quality DACs? Are there any such reported instances?
I don't like headphones so this is an academic question as far as I am concerned, but it would be interesting to know.


You need to have a system that is resolving enough to discern differences in DACs. An entry-level system that does not have sufficient resolution or transparency lacks the resolving power to clearly show subtle differences between DACs.

Audio Hardware with Blind Tested Sonic Signature

Reply #9 –
No, pretty much all modern day DACs, competently designed, sound the same to all of us under typical living room music/movie scenarios, even ones connected through state of the art, price no object speakers/amplification using trained, expert listeners. Although there are a few clunkers out there, good, competently designed DACs can be made easily and for very little money.

When there are "differences" it is usually because:

- the maker has used trickery such as having a barely discernible higher output level than the rest so they are mistakenly perceived as "better", or the casual listener is not using precise level matching via instrumentation, in their inevitably sighted comparison
- an impedance mismatch in the overall chain more related to the pre amp output section of their outboard DAC, not the DAC chip itself, causing, for instance, a change to the otherwise very flat frequency response,  or
- the listener has pegged their volume to max and is comparing subtle differences in the products' noise floors and/or low level linearity, while listening a few inches away from the speaker, to material which is so faint it would be completely inaudible from the normal seated position at a normal volume level that didn't clip the amps or fry the speakers with normal level material, which of course is completely inconsequential to actual, real world music/movie reproduction.

Audio Hardware with Blind Tested Sonic Signature

Reply #10 –
Quote
When there are "differences" it is usually because:


Some DACs use different filters. That on its own can affect the sound quality to an audible degree.

One can also claim that when differences are not found it is because one has a biased predisposition towards thinking that DACs can't sound different, and so they don't. They create their own self-fulfilling prophecy.

Audio Hardware with Blind Tested Sonic Signature

Reply #11 –
Quote from: Yahzi on
Quote
When there are "differences" it is usually because:


Some DACs use different filters. That on its own can affect the sound quality to an audible degree.


And some DACs offer a choice of filters, like the Cambridge DACMagic. On top of that, there are some which claim to use no filter at all.

Audio Hardware with Blind Tested Sonic Signature

Reply #12 –
If you think that using a different filter than a steep brickwall with something like CD audio helps, then you're only tricking yourself. The audio was filtered before, so with different (special audiophile) filters all you will add is phase shift, extra ringing, extra roll-off, images (as in aliasing) or other distortions.
"I hear it when I see it."

Audio Hardware with Blind Tested Sonic Signature

Reply #13 –
Having different filters is like offering presets on a TV set: "Crime Drama", "Reality TV", "Game Show", and "Sit Com". It's to offer another worthless feature so people feel in control and have something to fiddle with so they proudly feel as if they properly had some say as to what is "correct", but in reality there should be only one correct way to do it and offering the user, who most likely has no spectrum analyzer nor test tones at their disposal to find out which one is actually the correct one, is ridiculous.

When I proctored a blind amp test for my expert listener, audiophile friend, through a $16K, 2 ch. only system ($13K if you don't count wires) in a dedicated, high end listening room, the Sony ES reference, "Class A" SACD machine we used, $3,500, had this silly feature:

"Here's how Sony describes the filter actions in the draft copy of the manual included with the SCD-1: "STD (Standard) provides a wide frequency range and spatial feeling, as it holds the most information among the five filters and is suitable for classical music. Filter 1: Clear (slow rolloff) provides smooth and powerful sound with clear image position and is suitable for jazz band and jazz vocals. Filter 2: Plain (slow rolloff) provides fresh and energetic sound with rich vocal expression suitable for vocal-enhanced music. Filter 3: Fine (slow rolloff) provides a well-balanced natural sound having a feeling of large scale and rich reverberation suitable for listening to any music when you are relaxed." (That's the one!) "Filter 4: Silky (slow rolloff) provides a feeling of wide scale with associated subtleties suitable for classical music, especially if you enjoy fine string touches."

But, but what do you set if for if you are concerned mostly with classical music extra fine string touches? 

The reproduction of sound is the reproduction of sound; we don't need different settings for "Sit Coms" vs "Jazz". There can be only one, truly correct, accurate setting if the goal is faithful high fidelity. If your room/speakers needs tonal correction to achieve a neutral response, that's one thing, but doing the correction in each of the source devices is absurd. Source devices should have dead flat frequeny responses over the audible bandwidth and this has been pretty easy to achieve since the very introduction of consumer digital sound in the 1980's. Take this portable Discman for example:

http://www.walkman-archive.com/articles/ar..._lineout_ii.png
[IIRC, it may have some of the dumb mode options too, but this setting is obviously the correct one.]

Audio Hardware with Blind Tested Sonic Signature

Reply #14 –
Quote from: Yahzi on
Quote
When there are "differences" it is usually because:

One can also claim that when differences are not found it is because one has a biased predisposition towards thinking that DACs can't sound different, and so they don't. They create their own self-fulfilling prophecy.

Not only did my audiophile test subject have a predisposition towards thinking there are differences, he also brought to the test music he thought would most easily show it off, was allowed pre-test practicing sessions as much as he wanted, could listen mid test to any identified source as much as he wanted, he also had a slight financial incentive to demonstrate he could hear a dfference (since the test was to settle a small bet with 2:1 odds in his favor). He lost. [Although our particular test was not of DACs.]

Audio Hardware with Blind Tested Sonic Signature

Reply #15 –
Quote from: Yahzi on
You need to have a system that is resolving enough to discern differences in DACs. An entry-level system that does not have sufficient resolution or transparency lacks the resolving power to clearly show subtle differences between DACs.

That's the answer I usually see to justify DACs. Entry level is a subjective classification. I could have a very decent system, and when used for a DBT of a DAC that costs in multiples of it, could be given the same answer in another form - that you need a system of the class of the DAC, usually defined by its price point, to hear the difference. Not that there is any report of this being the case in any DBT I know of.
Leaving this never ending debate apart, if DACs cannot be distinguished in a DBT with high quality headphones that aren't affected by room noise levels, that should be conclusive?
While DACs do have filters, their effect is irrelevant for a DAC DBT, where what is being tested should be just the DAC functionality. One would not do a DBT for amps with tone controls engaged.

Audio Hardware with Blind Tested Sonic Signature

Reply #16 –
Quote from: Yahzi on
Quote from: KumarK on
Quote from: stephan_g on
Most any competently designed DAC should be just fine, however.

One reason for this could be that any subtle but audible difference may be lost in the noise floor of even a quiet listening room. Would a DBT using high quality headphones have a different result justifying claims from "better" quality DACs? Are there any such reported instances?
I don't like headphones so this is an academic question as far as I am concerned, but it would be interesting to know.


You need to have a system that is resolving enough to discern differences in DACs. An entry-level system that does not have sufficient resolution or transparency lacks the resolving power to clearly show subtle differences between DACs.


If you believe this, then it is yet another reason not to do listening tests of DACs due to their very low sensitivity to minute differences between devices.  Instead, one should directly measure the device's amplitude response, phase response and distortion under the conditions you intend to use it.  If they are low relative to the source material you intend to listen to, than in effect the device will perform perfectly and a listening test would be pointless (other than to use the device as the gold standard reference).

Audio Hardware with Blind Tested Sonic Signature

Reply #17 –
Quote from: mzil link=msg=0 date=
Having different filters is like offering presets on a TV set: "Crime Drama", "Reality TV", "Game Show", and "Sit Com". It's to offer another worthless feature so people feel in control and have something to fiddle with so they proudly feel as if they properly had some say as to what is "correct", but in reality there should be only one correct way to do it and offering the user, who most likely has no spectrum analyzer nor test tones at their disposal to find out which one is actually the correct one, is ridiculous.


And which one is the 'correct' one?

Quote
The reproduction of sound is the reproduction of sound; we don't need different settings for "Sit Coms" vs "Jazz". There can be only one, truly correct, accurate setting if the goal is faithful high fidelity.


And what is 'truly correct, accurate faithful high fidelity'? How do you know what 'truly correct, accurate faithful high fidelity' even is?

Quote
If your room/speakers needs tonal correction to achieve a neutral response, that's one thing, but doing the correction in each of the source devices is absurd. Source devices should have dead flat frequeny responses over the audible bandwidth and this has been pretty easy to achieve since the very introduction of consumer digital sound in the 1980's. Take this portable Discman for example:


That's just an assertion. There is no requirement for a 'dead flat' frequency response. That is *your* mandate for 'truly correct, accurate faithful high fidelity'! No one knows what it is, no one was there when the material was created, and unless you were in the same acoustic environment, and knew, without a shadow of a doubt what the creator intended when he made the content, you don't have the foggiest clue what was intended, or what 'truly correct, accurate faithful high fidelity' even is.

You are basically guessing. I guess you are now firmly in the clutches of the TOS rules and regulations. As they say, an assertion made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

Quote

Audio Hardware with Blind Tested Sonic Signature

Reply #18 –
Quote from: mzil link=msg=0 date=
Not only did my audiophile test subject have a predisposition towards thinking there are differences, he also brought to the test music he thought would most easily show it off, was allowed pre-test practicing sessions as much as he wanted, could listen mid test to any identified source as much as he wanted, he also had a slight financial incentive to demonstrate he could hear a dfference (since the test was to settle a small bet with 2:1 odds in his favor). He lost. [Although our particular test was not of DACs.]


Yes, I've heard about this. Hardly conclusive evidence, however. It doesn't matter how much pre-training was *allowed*, the test subject may have had no training whatsoever, that you are aware of, and was not ready for the test, despite the fact that he said he was.

He may have been confident from the get-go, but his failure to discern differences is not evidence that differences did not exist, merely that he may not have had proper training to identify differences in those conditions, which were obviously foreign to him. I suspect there were no positive *and* negative controls in this test experiment.


Audio Hardware with Blind Tested Sonic Signature

Reply #19 –
Quote from: Yahzi on
Yes, I've heard about this. Hardly conclusive evidence, however.

Actually it was conclusive proof, regarding the terms of our bet, which he agreed upon, on camera, that under conditions he designed himself, in a dedicated, "ultimate audio", 2ch. only sound room with pro-grade room treatments [not factored into the 2ch system's $16K price tag, by the way], all wired by himself, with music of his choosing, at a time when he chose, with as much pre-test practicing as he wanted, using a system which he chose and was intimately familiar with [so neither it, the room, nor the music were "foreign" to him], and all of which he signed off on as being sufficient resolution to reveal a difference, that he couldn't hear a difference under HIS terms, so I won the bet.

He also referred to himself as an "expert listener" [his own words by the way, also recorded on camera], worked professionally in high-end audio, was a part time recording engineer on the side who built some of his own pro-grade gear, such as mic preamps and power supplies [including some very cool body worn stealth gear that would make James Bond envious], was in his twenties so his high frequency hearing was still intact, and he knew the technical workings of audio like nobody's business, even being able to recite stats and authors from a decade old issue of Stereophile, off the top of his head, one of magazines he read extensively.

Did our test prove nobody can hear a difference between a $3500 amp and a $500 amp? No, nor did it prove that he couldn't have heard the difference if the moon had been full that night or if he had worn his lucky socks, whatever.
What the test did prove conclusively is that under conditions he said would allow him to hear a difference, he couldn't, so he lost the bet and paid me the money, without question.

The test had both positive and negative controls.

Audio Hardware with Blind Tested Sonic Signature

Reply #20 –
Quote from: Yahzi on
If it's 'correct' because it has a flat frequency response then you need to prove that a 'flat frequency response' is a requirement for being 'correct'.

Wow. Your scientific incompetence and poor understanding of even basic principals is so startling I don't even know where to begin nor do I have the time.

Bye.

Audio Hardware with Blind Tested Sonic Signature

Reply #21 –
Quote from: Yahzi on
You need to have a system that is resolving enough to discern differences in DACs. An entry-level system that does not have sufficient resolution or transparency lacks the resolving power to clearly show subtle differences between DACs.


Is there any scientific definition or measure of this audiophile quality of resolution apart from the number at the bottom of the invoice?


Quote from: Yahzi on
If it's 'correct' because it has a flat frequency response then you need to prove that a 'flat frequency response' is a requirement for being 'correct'. All I see is rhetoric from you. 


So, if I have an instrument with a range of three octaves, and I have recorded it, but my playback equipment cannot reproduce the higher or lower of those octaves, it could still qualify as being "correct?"

Perhaps it takes more than just a flat frequency response, but yes, patently, even to me, that is a requirement. Unless a person just loves to hear, for instance, bass thumps with no distracting intrusion from melody. That's preference and everybody has a right to their preference.

Quote from: Yahzi on
the test subject may have had no training whatsoever, that you are aware of, and was not ready for the test, despite the fact that he said he was.

The final recourse of the audiophile, having dismissed the equipment as being insufficiently resolving/expensive is to dismiss the listener as being deficient in some respect.

It is all good confirmatory stuff to support my thesis that the audiophile thing is, essentially, about ego. And that is the cause of the "audiophile chasm"
The most important audio cables are the ones in the brain

Audio Hardware with Blind Tested Sonic Signature

Reply #22 –
Quote from: Yahzi on
You need to have a system that is resolving enough to discern differences in DACs. An entry-level system that does not have sufficient resolution or transparency lacks the resolving power to clearly show subtle differences between DACs.


That's what all the golden ears told us, so we staged the DAC DBTs in their golden audio systems.  They do random guessing as well as the rest of us.

Please quantify the performance of an audio system that has sufficient resolution or transparency for sorting DACs.

The real problem is that even fairly cheap DACs are among the best audio components that we have in terms of technical performance. They are right up there with good amps and preamps.


Audio Hardware with Blind Tested Sonic Signature

Reply #23 –
Quote from: Yahzi on
Quote from: mzil link=msg=0 date=
Having different filters is like offering presets on a TV set: "Crime Drama", "Reality TV", "Game Show", and "Sit Com". It's to offer another worthless feature so people feel in control and have something to fiddle with so they proudly feel as if they properly had some say as to what is "correct", but in reality there should be only one correct way to do it and offering the user, who most likely has no spectrum analyzer nor test tones at their disposal to find out which one is actually the correct one, is ridiculous.


And which one is the 'correct' one?


These days virtually every AVR with a street price over $250 and some below that have some kind of automated system tuning facility including a measurement mic. You put the mic where you sit, press a button, and the system is automatically checked out for correct operation (incorrectly wired speakers are detected) and tuned for that listening location or even a collection of listening locations.

Obviously, these AVR vendors are staking their financial welfare on having a pretty good idea about what constitutes a correct system response. Reading on a large audiophile forum, I would say that these facilities are fairly successful.

Quote
Quote
The reproduction of sound is the reproduction of sound; we don't need different settings for "Sit Coms" vs "Jazz". There can be only one, truly correct, accurate setting if the goal is faithful high fidelity.


And what is 'truly correct, accurate faithful high fidelity'?


Its a complex question because the recordings and other sound sources are part of the equation.

Quote
How do you know what 'truly correct, accurate faithful high fidelity' even is?


IMO the most 'Truly correct, accurate faithful high fidelity' system  is the one that provides balanced, wide range, pleasing sound with the widest variety of program sources.

Quote
Quote
If your room/speakers needs tonal correction to achieve a neutral response, that's one thing, but doing the correction in each of the source devices is absurd. Source devices should have dead flat frequency responses over the audible bandwidth and this has been pretty easy to achieve since the very introduction of consumer digital sound in the 1980's. Take this portable Discman for example:


That's just an assertion.


It is more than that - it is a simplifying assumption. If we accept non-flat music players then we would have to tune the common parts of the system for each music player. If we demand that the music players be flat, then we can leave that vast area of complexity out of our system.  IMO that simplifying assumption is often but not always adhered to.  IME as the quality of the source goes up, the simplifying assumption is more frequently adhered to.

Quote
There is no requirement for a 'dead flat' frequency response. That is *your* mandate for 'truly correct, accurate faithful high fidelity'! No one knows what it is, no one was there when the material was created, and unless you were in the same acoustic environment, and knew, without a shadow of a doubt what the creator intended when he made the content, you don't have the foggiest clue what was intended, or what 'truly correct, accurate faithful high fidelity' even is.


The above paragraph shows considerable ignorance of the realities of modern audio production. For example the monitoring systems used to control audio production tend to have pretty flat frequency response. Control rooms are often acoustically treated to improve the smoothness and balance of the sound quality. Equalization is often used in monitoring systems. 

In many cases there is a ready reference for judging the quality of a recording - the live sound of the instruments playing which is present even when the recording is ultimately multimiced and multitracked.

Audio Hardware with Blind Tested Sonic Signature

Reply #24 –
Quote from: Yahzi on
You need to have a system that is resolving enough to discern differences in DACs.

This presumes audible differences exist to be discerned. If this is regarding non-pathological DACs, please cite your evidence and method of obtaining.
If it's "audiophile" DACs, don't bother.

Quote from: Yahzi on
An entry-level system that does not have sufficient resolution or transparency lacks the resolving power to clearly show subtle differences between DACs.

Please objectively define the verifiable, measurable parameters for "entry-level", "resolution", "transparency" and "resolving power".
I'd like to incorporate the latter three into my speaker designs and look forward to your help on this matter.
Thanks.
Loudspeaker manufacturer