i will say, i am very happy with well mastered 16/44. i have listened to sacds...not always really felt it was that much better than well-mastered 16/44...which is consistent with what some people have said...all being equal the formats will reveal a difference, but much more difference is actually driven by the mastering job not the playback format.
Hi-rez to Redbook and back again ...
- Thread starter fas42
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I couldn't tell them apart with ABX testing, but playing the whole track, I preferred track 2 the most and track 3 the least. Track 1 was "easiest listening".
Track One (1) is the culprit, although when I heard them through my decent AudioEngine 5 desktop system it was my fave! 
Likely due to my inexpensive soundcard having less work to do? Dunno. When I sent them to my main rig and had one of my kids rename them randomly I picked out the upsampled a little easier...it has significantly less air and a harsher leading edge (which on piano can sound good/more lively in some systems IMO). However, it still sounded damn good, Bruce.
Likely due to my inexpensive soundcard having less work to do? Dunno. When I sent them to my main rig and had one of my kids rename them randomly I picked out the upsampled a little easier...it has significantly less air and a harsher leading edge (which on piano can sound good/more lively in some systems IMO). However, it still sounded damn good, Bruce.
Bruce, was there any difference between track 2 and 3?
As ted_b said, they all sounded damn good. Who's the pianist?
As ted_b said, they all sounded damn good. Who's the pianist?
Have these tests got some sort of DRM on them? I need to put them on a CD to play them on my system and can't.
If you are using a CD player, only 16 bits/ 44.1 kHz will do otherwise it is not in agreement with the CD audio standard.
Tracks 2/3 were exactly the same.. except that I had to shorten each track at different lengths as not to give any clues.
The file was down/upsampled using the Apodizing filter in Pyramix.
Pianist is Leonard Shure
I think that in spite of a bit of switching equipment in the signal chain, and a whole lot of post-study protest on the internet, Meyer and Moran got this one about right.
Tim
Tim
As Tim would say, what does that tell us about expectation bias? Or maybe you had a swig of good stuff inbetween?
Frank
I don't know about expectation bias because I was expecting Bruce to pull one like this. After listening, I pulled the tracks into Audacity and had a look at the spectrum and saw that 2 and 3 were the same. May be because I played it in sequence every time, track 3 was always the 3rd track I listened to, and I grew to like the track after the first play, then got bored on the 3rd replay.
Like I admitted, I couldn't hear a difference with ABX testing. As expected, Bruce did a great job with the resampling.
Now...... if he had down-rez'ed it to 16bit, and then extended it back to 24bit using various dither algorighms..... do you think that anyone would hear a difference?
Like I admitted, I couldn't hear a difference with ABX testing. As expected, Bruce did a great job with the resampling.
Now...... if he had down-rez'ed it to 16bit, and then extended it back to 24bit using various dither algorighms..... do you think that anyone would hear a difference?
Which very neatly dovetails into my comments about motivation levels in the ABX thread ...
The one thing ABX is guaranteed to do, is to NOT demonstrate the audibility of subtle variations in sound quality, from where I stand. Nuff said ...
Frank
Track One (1) is the culprit, although when I heard them through my decent AudioEngine 5 desktop system it was my fave!
Funny...i had a similar experience. i was listening in a crowded room on a laptop at low levels. While Track 1 seemed easier to hear, i preferred Track 3. Upon re-listening in quiet room onlaptop, i thought Track 2, then 3 then 1. So a toggle between 2/3 and then 1. But i wonder if the laptop was part of the listening experience in that it struggled to download the files and i heard a lot of music "clipping" every half second or so where the music would stop (streaming?).
Your system probably has a very high latency.
You might try a tool like DPC Latency checker to find out
http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/SW/AudioTools/TroubleShooting.htm
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