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Topic: Lossless vs. Redbook tests? (Read 116252 times) previous topic - next topic
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Lossless vs. Redbook tests?

Reply #125 –
Quote from: AV-OCD on
Bummer for me, since I use a Mac Mini and it would be interesting to see if this still holds true on OSX.

I think you would first need to find a way to achieve "bit perfect" playback - i.e. a way to bypass all audio processing that happens in Core Audio and in the player program. I did a Google search for "bit perfect" "mac mini". I checked some of the search results (many of them pointed to CA, BTW). Here's one that might actually be useful: http://www.lavryengineering.com/lavry_foru...p?f=1&t=690

After that you would just need to find a way to reroute the output to a program that can record it in real-time without altering it. I don't know if that kind of tools are available for OS X.

Lossless vs. Redbook tests?

Reply #126 –
Quote from: AV-OCD on
First, I do not reject the logic that lossless = no loss.  I have stated several times that I hear no difference between ALAC & AIFF, so lossless = lossless holds true in my experience.

But you do reject the logic of lossless = no loss or else you would not go on about hearing tests. Checking that a compressed file decompresses to the original (e.g. a binary diff) is a stronger and far more complete test than any hearing test would be. This is why those that hold a rational view (the dominant one here) have no interest in performing a hearing test to compare a digital stream with itself to test the hypothesis is the sound quality of lossless compressed files the same as uncompressed ones.

It is this rejection of a rational/scientific view and the embracing of the view that differences that may be perceived in a hearing test would be testing the original hypothesis that marks you down as an audiophile.

Hearing tests would be appropriate if you were interesting in testing other hypotheses such as:

- are some hardware combinations sufficiently badly implemented that decompressing an audio stream will alter the output to a degree that is audible.

- do people perceive differences between identical audio streams.

Quote from: AV-OCD on
Somewhere along the way, you also grouped me into the "audiophile" category, which you imply is someone that bases their beliefs on irrationtal, subjective findings.  While I do consider myself an audiophile (a person that seeks high fidelity audio), my definition does not include irrational thinking as a prerequisit.

Considering yourself to be rational is not the same as being rational. Your opening post on this thread declared that you held an irrational view on the topic. You did not embrace or seek to master the rational view (lossless is lossless) after receiving the first few replies but railed against it. You are still hanging on to listening tests as being the answer but without changing the question as best I can see although things are not exactly clear.

Quote from: AV-OCD on
What have I said up to this post that leads you to believe that my view differs from the "predominant view" on this site?

Pretty much everything to do with hearing tests being a rational way to examine the difference between uncompressed and lossless compressed files. If people reporting hearing differences is your interest then change your hypothesis so it lines up with what is being measured. If your interest is a difference between uncompressed and decompressed lossless files than measure that.

Lossless vs. Redbook tests?

Reply #127 –
A scientific user's point of view:

The problems between technicians, scientists, and simple listeners are following:

1. Audiophiles: translates to:
sound lovers , phil = love, loving; audio = music, sound etc, it should be clear.
So, Audiophiles, those we are all, be it on HA dealing technically with audio, or on other more or less! scientific sites.
2. Audiofool:
This translates already to somebody, who is "fooled" by what he listened !
The audiofool can be a rational, intelligent thinker in his normal living.
But he usually isn't an audio-codec developer.
This means, he listens to music, and he wants as many high fidelity as possible in his living room at home, compared to a live concert experience.
He has often a basic understanding of technics, physics, maybe from school.

But the audiofool got a problem, he heard or read "technical" things, which are only half-true until non-true = marketing (non)sense.

Because the marketing stuff (not all are bad or lies) tries to point out the advantages of certain products by technical advantages (or by emotion, or both) for normal people,
the technical descriptions are written less scientific, the marketing technical descriptions are simple, sometimes oversimplifying.
And pseudo-science comes into account also.
Only at this point we are at a delusional point.
If marketing guys abuse their creational writing power to invent new physics eg.
Because normal people will have a hard way to see the difference between serious marketing, honest technical advertisments,
and between pseudo-technical magic-physics-bogus.

And in this context the normal person, who wants to have a perfect listen expereince,
is in danger to get fooled.
he will even try to select new audio components by comparing them at home (given by local dealer) by listening,
but he is in danger to fail.
because he is even not able to listen blinded, or to have the right setup for comparing meaningful.
He should know about A/B and ABX, but honestly, how many people in real life know about that scientific methodology, who is not a technician or even a scientist by profession ? (I am, and that is the reason I am at HA and formerly at r3mix forum.)

3. Knowing testing methodology includes knowing, where the limits of testing are.

The limit of ABX is:
With an ABX test you can prove, show for given circumstances, that there is a difference between 2 states.
But you cannot prove, that there is no difference.
One can show, that at current conditions he or  a test-group cannot find a difference, but it is no proof for all times in scientific sense.
Depending on the matter, it might be likely that there is no difference, but only maybe.

This limit of ABX is one of the reasons, why nobody here even dealt before , to ABX ( = listen) to wav/AIFF and Lossless compressed format on the fly, like flac, ape, wavpack.
At least not as publicly organized test.

If we are honest, maybe everybody did it already for themselves !

I guess, a lot of interested people in the matters of PC and HiFi, own a CD-Player, and a PC with connection to the HiFi setup.
So, playing something from PC, be it wav or FLAC, and playing the original source CD in the dedicated CD-player at same time, maybe gapless for switching, or with a few seconds offset,
so that same seconds of music are repeated by the other source,
this expereince will have got many people i guess.


And as we see, only a few, 2? at CA?, tell something of a difference.
And I think, it is quite obvious, those have an interest in discussing such magic stuff. Either they are in some expensive music selling business, or they do it for their religion, to stay "leader" of their "sect".

As you see, I have a crystal clear point of view, but i don't "condem" or insult the (many) "audiofools" out there.
Why ?
because , as described above, those group of listeners have indeed listened the non-existant difference.
A paradoxon ?
No, the answer is the placebo effect in the scientific sense.
The warm fuzzy feeling does exist by this reason !

So, it is up to those guys, to listen blinded, with help of a friend eg., with a little bit well setup HiFi/PC chain, and then come to own conclusions.

of course, there are the critics on test-listening, the stress etc., which might "hide" tiny differences, so that ABX test fails.

it means, the music feeling will be "warmer/more detailed, more fluent", if you don't listen blinded, and you enjoy the magic of maybe certain brand names, cables and/or so-called voodoo.

The conclusion will be,
the educated technicians should not stop telling truth, but be more sensible in talking, discussing with "the other side", thopse guys, who wanna enjoy music and not deal with technics, but who have basic understandings, and also the will to even invest a lot money into technical!!! HiFi/music gear...

Only if you reach the ear of your customer, he will be able to listen to the true technical arguments, not to the widely sold marketing-magic-tech.
Indeed, because with magic you can make more money, those magic will be advertised more, in the real world the magazines etc. will be filled up with hidden and open advertisements...





4.

As last point I show you a simple test for everybody, which should give even more practical proof !  (better proof, than abx could be in this matter of non-existant differences)


Play 5.1 DTS-CD on your system.

(Of course, this test is not easy to carry out for somebody, who don't own an amp/receiver, with 5.1 DTS decoding abilities.)

5.1 DTS informations for 6 ! music channels is stored inside the "stereo-waves" of the CDDA = CD-Audio format, 1st on CD.
That is technically 2 channels, 16 bit,. 44.1 kHz sampling PCM.
But inside these PCM waves, there is special data bit for bit, which can be decoded by DTS decoders to 5.1 music.

if you play these DTS waves via normal D/A converter, you get only noise.
Also, if the bitstream gets corrupted, noise results.

So, these special thing is way more suited for tests to watch, if the play chain is corrupted, or not.
if the chain is correct, and the 5.1 dts stuff is transmitted bit for bit perfectly, eg. from PC to HiFi/dts-receiver, then it plays.
If not, only noise...

5.1 DTS music packed inside 16 bit stereo 44.1 kHz PCM wav,
will play also, if those waves are Losslessly "compressed" = packed into FLAC, wavpack etc.
Later playing on the fly out of Flac, or unpacked/CD-R burned from Flac->wav

I can report my own tests,

eg. the old-fashioned sound card Terratec EWX 24/96 already gives bit perfect output,
already on old-fashioned Pentium 3 at 600 or 800 MHz.
Only, if high cpu load together with high HD load or bus transfers of otehr data than the music data happens, then the music stutters.
But you don't need abx for that stuttering.

Eg.  foobar2000 as player,
you can select a several seconds buffer in prefrences settings.
foobar reads music/wav/flac in advance, buffers the music, and plays them not "on the fly", but probably out of RAM.

There is no difference between FLAC and wav, or from CD and Flac.

A PC has in my example time cycles of 800 MHz or the PCI bus, of 100 or 133 MHz, compare this to 44.1 kHz.
Ie.:
44.1 kHz = 0.0441 MHz.

You see, the transfer in time of music is simple, even for very old fashioned slow PC.

I recommend optical digital connection between PC and HiFi. Then you get bit perfectness easily into your HiFi, no electrical noise.
Otherwise you need to rely on the quality of the analogue parts/chain in your soundcard.


And yes,

Lossless music packing = "compression" of waves, like FLAC,
is only a strict rational mathematic method.
Only maths logic proofs count here, no listening tests required regarding wav vs. Flac.
No psycho-models involved,
no emotions necessary.

And PC is maths also,
either 1+1=2 or 1+1=10
or the PC is faulty.

Lossless vs. Redbook tests?

Reply #128 –
Quote from: krabapple on
This is akin to the denial of evidence of evolution, on the grounds that it can also be God testing us and WE CAN'T PROVE IT ISN'T.

(Though actually an ABX switch can itself be compared to the direct path.  The only key point is to keep the comparison blind.  And it's been done.)
I'm glad you "corrected" yourself - I think the often quoted comparison between creationism and audiophile beliefs is flawed, for exactly the reason you said: audiophile beliefs can be tested in the here and now and proven to be false. Creationism may seem unlikely, but it's not possible to "disprove" it in exactly the same way - unless you can re-wind history like a video tape.

There are religious claims that are, by definition (by design?), unprovable. Audiophiles, when pressed, sometimes try to construct very similar arguments - but at the end of the day, if they claim to hear a difference, yet cannot say whether they are listening to A or B in a double blind test (no switch box needed - manually performed if necessary! no time limit required - take weeks if you want!) then the claims fall apart.

It might be a subtle distinction, but I think it's worth making.

Cheers,
David.

Lossless vs. Redbook tests?

Reply #129 –
Quote from: Alex B on
I think you would first need to find a way to achieve "bit perfect" playback
Exactly. Of the people who have actually tested something in this thread, look at the percentage who have found something other than the bit perfect result they expected.

(I don't believe this usually causes an audible difference, but if you're concerned enough to use lossless, you should probably get this part of your system right too!)

Cheers,
David.

Lossless vs. Redbook tests?

Reply #130 –
Quote from: user on
... Eg.  foobar2000 as player,
you can select a several seconds buffer in prefrences settings.
foobar reads music/wav/flac in advance, buffers the music, and plays them not "on the fly", but probably out of RAM. ...

It's good you mentioned buffering. There is no computer audio system that has zero latency. Buffering is involved in many stages in the audio chain. The biggest buffer is usually already in the player program. The OS level audio components and audio drivers have additional buffers and also the final HW components buffer some amount of the data before processing it. Maybe the existence of the various buffer stages and their effect is not obvious to everyone.

Practically these buffers make any comparison between playback of uncompressed and losslessly compressed file versions unnecessary. The first audio HW component receives the same signal in any case. The amount of the additional processing power and time that is needed for decoding a lossless format is truly neglible when compared with the other CPU intensive tasks that are going on and with the amount of buffering. Actually, reading the bigger uncompressed source file might in some cases consume as much or more resources than reading & decoding the smaller lossless file version. I think this could be demonstrated e.g. by using some less than optimal device drivers and a slow flash memory device or an optical drive.

Lossless vs. Redbook tests?

Reply #131 –
Quote from: 2Bdecided on
Quote from: krabapple on
This is akin to the denial of evidence of evolution, on the grounds that it can also be God testing us and WE CAN'T PROVE IT ISN'T.

(Though actually an ABX switch can itself be compared to the direct path.  The only key point is to keep the comparison blind.  And it's been done.)
I'm glad you "corrected" yourself - I think the often quoted comparison between creationism and audiophile beliefs is flawed, for exactly the reason you said: audiophile beliefs can be tested in the here and now and proven to be false. Creationism may seem unlikely, but it's not possible to "disprove" it in exactly the same way - unless you can re-wind history like a video tape.

There are religious claims that are, by definition (by design?), unprovable. Audiophiles, when pressed, sometimes try to construct very similar arguments - but at the end of the day, if they claim to hear a difference, yet cannot say whether they are listening to A or B in a double blind test (no switch box needed - manually performed if necessary! no time limit required - take weeks if you want!) then the claims fall apart.
In terms of the ad hoc hypotheses used to justify their beliefs (in the face of failed ABX tests, or novel discoveries of evolution), and perhaps even the reliance in infallible evidence, I think creationism and audiophilia are entirely comparable.

Lossless vs. Redbook tests?

Reply #132 –
I fail to see how such a comparison is particularly useful.

A theist would argue that something in the supernatural (literally: above the scope of natural science) realm is taking place where as audio (and the human sensory experience of it) is a completely natural, verifiable phenomenon.

Few audiophorons would admit to believing that they are experiencing the work of the supernatural when listening to audio, even if we think they might as well think it.

Religion, even in it's most audacious forms, is open to all sorts of philosophical and metaphysical arguments that simply can't possibly apply to something like audio. There's just no excuse.
If you try to compare it to religion, then you're just flat out giving these phools too much credit.
elevatorladylevitateme

Lossless vs. Redbook tests?

Reply #133 –
Quote from: shakey_snake on
If you try to compare it to religion, then you're just flat out giving these phools too much credit.
My concern exactly. Speakers are driven by electricity, not magic.

Some people make arguments that imply the latter, but I've only ever known one person who stuck to such an argument when it was shown what they were really claiming!

(What happened to him? We sacked him!)

Cheers,
David.

Lossless vs. Redbook tests?

Reply #134 –
Isn't a lot of this just about what we're prepaerd to accept and what we're not? I mean we all accept some things as true without needing to prove them unequivocally to ourselves. If we all found it neccessary to double-check every law and theory there'd be little time in our lives for anything else.

As an example I've never had a look at the Nyquist Theorem but from what I understand of it from 2nd or 3rd hand sources it makes sense to me so I accept it. However, it is not unlikely that to someone else with a similar level of understanding to me it might appear ill-founded. Without looking any more closely we'll both have our differing views and both consider them correct. If we then read something like "digital sound can't be accurate because it's just joining up dots and can't recreate the entire waveform" I'm likely to dismiss it but my hypothetical counterpart is likely to accept it.

This is in danger of turning into a bit of a ramble. I guess what I trying to say is that unless you are in possession of all of the facts how can you tell the science from the pseudo-science? You just have to make a judgement based on what makes sense to you. It's also possible that you think you're in possession of all the facts when actually you aren't.

It's better in my view to try to educate rather than ridicule and it's better to be willing to learn rather than feel threatened. Entrenced postions on either side are counter-productive. That's why, on the whole, HA is a better to place to be than other forums I've come across

Lossless vs. Redbook tests?

Reply #135 –
Quote from: Axon on
More than anything, I think the most important thing I learned in this thread is that the average HA poster would flunk the ACT reading section badly.


How many pre high school enrollment tests would you pass in the average HA posters' native languages?

Lossless vs. Redbook tests?

Reply #136 –
Quote from: Rotareneg on
Just checked my X-Fi XtremeMusic and when in "audio creation mode" with the master sampling rate set to 44.1 kHz and bit-matched playback on the "What U Hear" input did in fact record a bit-perfect recording of the output from FB2K (kernel streaming mode.)

Hmm. I wonder what I was doing wrong then. Perhaps ASIO could be to blame in my case (despite that not really being possible as far as I can tell).

Lossless vs. Redbook tests?

Reply #137 –
Quote from: honestguv on
Quote from: AV-OCD on
First, I do not reject the logic that lossless = no loss.  I have stated several times that I hear no difference between ALAC & AIFF, so lossless = lossless holds true in my experience.

But you do reject the logic of lossless = no loss or else you would not go on about hearing tests. Checking that a compressed file decompresses to the original (e.g. a binary diff) is a stronger and far more complete test than any hearing test would be. This is why those that hold a rational view (the dominant one here) have no interest in performing a hearing test to compare a digital stream with itself to test the hypothesis is the sound quality of lossless compressed files the same as uncompressed ones.

It is this rejection of a rational/scientific view and the embracing of the view that differences that may be perceived in a hearing test would be testing the original hypothesis that marks you down as an audiophile.

Hearing tests would be appropriate if you were interesting in testing other hypotheses such as:

- are some hardware combinations sufficiently badly implemented that decompressing an audio stream will alter the output to a degree that is audible.

- do people perceive differences between identical audio streams.

Quote from: AV-OCD on
Somewhere along the way, you also grouped me into the "audiophile" category, which you imply is someone that bases their beliefs on irrationtal, subjective findings.  While I do consider myself an audiophile (a person that seeks high fidelity audio), my definition does not include irrational thinking as a prerequisit.

Considering yourself to be rational is not the same as being rational. Your opening post on this thread declared that you held an irrational view on the topic. You did not embrace or seek to master the rational view (lossless is lossless) after receiving the first few replies but railed against it. You are still hanging on to listening tests as being the answer but without changing the question as best I can see although things are not exactly clear.

Quote from: AV-OCD on
What have I said up to this post that leads you to believe that my view differs from the "predominant view" on this site?

Pretty much everything to do with hearing tests being a rational way to examine the difference between uncompressed and lossless compressed files. If people reporting hearing differences is your interest then change your hypothesis so it lines up with what is being measured. If your interest is a difference between uncompressed and decompressed lossless files than measure that.


You are confusing my level of knowledge with my ability to think rationally.  I may appear irrational because I don't fully understand the different testing procedures and their limits, but I am a person of reason and can be taught these things.  If you look at how my responses in this thread have evolved, you would see that I have acknowledged my relative level of ignorance and I have accepted the file comparison tests performed by Ron and Alex over the need to perform listening tests.  Though I still believe that anyone that claims to hear a difference between lossless and PCM should look into an ABX test for themselves.

If you still feel that I'm incapable of rational thought, I accept that.  You can't win 'em all. 

Lossless vs. Redbook tests?

Reply #138 –
Quote from: Alex B on
Quote from: user on
... Eg.  foobar2000 as player,
you can select a several seconds buffer in prefrences settings.
foobar reads music/wav/flac in advance, buffers the music, and plays them not "on the fly", but probably out of RAM. ...

It's good you mentioned buffering. There is no computer audio system that has zero latency. Buffering is involved in many stages in the audio chain. The biggest buffer is usually already in the player program. The OS level audio components and audio drivers have additional buffers and also the final HW components buffer some amount of the data before processing it. Maybe the existence of the various buffer stages and their effect is not obvious to everyone.

Practically these buffers make any comparison between playback of uncompressed and losslessly compressed file versions unnecessary. The first audio HW component receives the same signal in any case. The amount of the additional processing power and time that is needed for decoding a lossless format is truly neglible when compared with the other CPU intensive tasks that are going on and with the amount of buffering. Actually, reading the bigger uncompressed source file might in some cases consume as much or more resources than reading & decoding the smaller lossless file version. I think this could be demonstrated e.g. by using some less than optimal device drivers and a slow flash memory device or an optical drive.


Interesting.  If I understand correctly, because the lossless file is being decoded and fed into a buffer, the output is never really in real time. So there should be no theoretical difference between a lossless file that has been converted back to the original format prior to playback and the one being decoded just before playback?

Lossless vs. Redbook tests?

Reply #140 –
Instead of a losslessly compressed format you could as well use file system level compression (e.g. compressed NTFS partition) or put files in a zip or rar package and use a player that can play files directly from the package. The result would be the same. The player engine that passes data forward would receive unaltered PCM signal assuming the used computer is not underpowered for the task.

As greynol said, the audio signal would be seriously broken in case the computer cannot handle the task. It is simply not possible that the outputted audio would be only very slightly altered in way that only those with golden ears can detect.

I already knew the above before doing my test, but I was interested to see If I can prove it with a reproducible test procedure. In addition I have other uses for a bit perfect recording system so it is good to know that I can make it work.

EDIT: years > ears (where did that come from?  )

Lossless vs. Redbook tests?

Reply #141 –
Quote from: greynol on
That's basically what I was getting at yesterday.  If decoding falls apart (eg: Monkey's Audio Insane on a Pentium II), the audible differences won't be subtle.


I get the point you are trying to make, but from personal experience this works fine.  I've played back Monkey's Audio Insane on a 400 MHz Pentium II and it does play back in real time without breaking up.  You need something like OptimFROG Extranew to kill a PII :-)

Lossless vs. Redbook tests?

Reply #143 –
Quote from: AV-OCD on
It seems that you are making a few assumptions that simply aren’t true, and that my OP was misunderstood.  In an effort to clarify, here are the events that transpired leading up to my OP:

1)   I’m reading through the CA thread where various members are discussing the possibility of audible differences between lossless and AIFF/WAV.
...

I hope I'm not repeating something that was already said, but here's how I would get some perspective on this.  imagine you read through a CA thread where members discuss the possibility of audible differences between WAV played during a full moon vs. same WAV during a new moon.  would you have the same reaction as #1?

because that's exactly how it sounds to people who know how computers+electronics+sound reproduction works.  it's no wonder that they won't spend time trying to teach a class to believers, and that the people who discuss this stuff to no end are mostly people who don't know how these things work.

if there were some audible difference it would have nothing to do with lossless or not, it would be an equipment problem, and it would be reproducible and a finite, directed discussion to get to the bottom of it.

p.s. AV-OCD I'm not making claims about what you think (and I wasn't calling you an audiophool before  ), this is just my explanation of why/how these discussions always go.

Lossless vs. Redbook tests?

Reply #144 –
Quote from: AV-OCD on
If you still feel that I'm incapable of rational thought, I accept that.  You can't win 'em all. 


It very well may be that you are capable of rational thought, but you have demonstrated that you are completely incapable of utilizing the search feature. So, here they are:

[a href='index.php?showtopic=50156']Is Lossless really as good as WAV?[/a]
[a href='index.php?showtopic=23132']Apple Lossless vs. AIFF[/a]
[a href='index.php?showtopic=54490']Is WMA Lossless really lossless?[/a]
[a href='index.php?showtopic=37658']"is lossless really lossless" part N, split[/a]
[a href='index.php?showtopic=68648']Is Flac really lossy?[/a]

Lossless vs. Redbook tests?

Reply #145 –
Quote from: jcoalson on
I hope I'm not repeating something that was already said, but here's how I would get some perspective on this.  imagine you read through a CA thread where members discuss the possibility of audible differences between WAV played during a full moon vs. same WAV during a new moon.  would you have the same reaction as #1?

because that's exactly how it sounds to people who know how computers+electronics+sound reproduction works.  it's no wonder that they won't spend time trying to teach a class to believers, and that the people who discuss this stuff to no end are mostly people who don't know how these things work.

if there were some audible difference it would have nothing to do with lossless or not, it would be an equipment problem, and it would be reproducible and a finite, directed discussion to get to the bottom of it.

p.s. AV-OCD I'm not making claims about what you think (and I wasn't calling you an audiophool before  ), this is just my explanation of why/how these discussions always go.


Understood and no offense taken.  It all comes back to my relative lack of technical and testing knowledge compared to the majority here.  Even though I've been in this hobby for many years and have a good grasp on the big picture technical stuff, in this forum I'm definitely in the noob category.  But I've learned some things, so thanks to those that were gracious enough to overlook the gap in knowledge and offer up helpful explanations.

Lossless vs. Redbook tests?

Reply #146 –
Quote from: AV-OCD on
Even though I've been in this hobby for many years and have a good grasp on the big picture technical stuff, in this forum I'm definitely in the noob category.  But I've learned some things, so thanks to those that were gracious enough to overlook the gap in knowledge and offer up helpful explanations.
This is the story of my life.

Lossless vs. Redbook tests?

Reply #147 –
Quote from: greynol on
That's basically what I was getting at yesterday.  If decoding falls apart (eg: Monkey's Audio Insane on a Pentium II), the audible differences won't be subtle.

Moreover, it wouldn't result in "flat" or "lifeless" sounding... 
Can't wait for a HD-AAC encoder :P

Lossless vs. Redbook tests?

Reply #148 –
Quote from: 2Bdecided on
There are religious claims that are, by definition (by design?), unprovable. Audiophiles, when pressed, sometimes try to construct very similar arguments - but at the end of the day, if they claim to hear a difference, yet cannot say whether they are listening to A or B in a double blind test (no switch box needed - manually performed if necessary! no time limit required - take weeks if you want!) then the claims fall apart.


You'd think so , but no.  There's still the far-from-unknown audiophile argument that the MERE ACT of conscious comparison impairs perception of *real* differences. 


 

Lossless vs. Redbook tests?

Reply #149 –
Quote from: AV-OCD on
If your goal is to alienate most of the people that don't share your belief system, or that you feel are less knowledgeable than you, well then mission accomplished.  If your goal is to convince others of the benefits of scientific methodology, you may want to refine your approach.  It doesn't have to be a "soft sell"; just a rational, logical counter argument conveyed with respect for the recipient.  When you have no respect for the other party, an absence of insult will probably suffice. 


I checked in to CA again from your link....argh,the level of lame-brainedness certainly seems to have held steady there, complete with some patented audiophool favorite tropes,  at least until Axon came to tell them a few things I'd already said -- namely, that they can't necessarily trust their perceptions, and that there's plenty of science behind THAT assertion, and therefore they've been jumping the gun a bit in terms of evidence.  I'm perfectly OK with him being good cop to my bad cop on that score, it covers all the bases.  But even then several of the CA doofs *didn't get what Axon was saying* -- they simply 'saw' what they *wanted* to see, not what he actually wrote. 
Which is pretty much what happened to my posts there too -- and arguably to your first one here.



(Btw, I have seen Axon play more of the bad cop than this..and I must say he's good at that, too.  But if you think I wasnt' gentle enough, you should see what would happen if Arny or JJ posted there......ooh, the carnage.    )