And let's add the Tinkerbell effect as well - if you believe something hard enough, it will become true.
JPLAY Responds: An Open Letter
- Thread starter mauidan
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And let's add the Tinkerbell effect as well - if you believe something hard enough, it will become true.
Unfortunately, to get a meaningful result, any such experiment would be quite time consuming involving a complex test procedure, test rig and maybe other people, and even then might not eliminate all spurious influences. Without these precautions, we can persuade ourselves that any meaningless tweak is positive, or can even get it into our heads that everything we do is negative.
Whereas, instead we can look at how computers and DACs work, and deduce without any mystery that the basic concept of the system is valid. If we have doubts about specific electrical problems we can home in on them and check by measurement whether they hold water.
Fair enough to say that a placebo is harmless anyway - it's only a hobby - but I'd like to save my cash for the music rather than pouring it down the drain.
In terms of performance, one or two 'listening'-based placebos are OK, but an audio system is built from a complex arrangement of rigorously (and to a subjectivist, boringly-) engineered devices, none of which have been designed with reference to listening at all. It's only because of this that tweakers can play around with imaginary and not-so-imaginary mods while maintaining a decent sound. If the whole system was designed by tweaking and listening it wouldn't work at all.
Yes, Groucho, it's a good plan but implementing it in real world systems becomes the issue. Let me give you just one example - a USB isolator. Seems like a great idea - cut the power & ground link between DAC & PC's USB - result no noise riding on ground or VBus. Real-world problem: the only one that I know of which works with USB 2.0 high-speed (480mbps) is the ADnaco - price about $500. I don't see any DACs with this isolator built-in or even as an add-on. OK, introduce the isolator on the I2S lines after the USB receiver - some DACs do this. real-world problem: The noise has already infiltrated the DAC via ground &/or VBus. I could go on but the real-world throws up implementation issues all the time which theory doesn't deal with.
Can I see the statistics that back up your probability statement? Do you have the timing variation normal range for USB isochronous data packets? What noise level is acceptable in the various parts of the DAC circuitry? What noise level do you consider is acceptable for the Audio clock in the USB DAC, the DAC chip, the USB receiver chip, the USB clock?
Try to offer some technical detail that backs up your statement of "highly unlikely"!
Instead of offering side-line comments, every now & then, why not engage with the technical detail & show how what I outlined is pseudo-scientific rather than give some wiki links of no relevance?
How about the ones from Olimex, Loligo and Acromag? There was even a DIY version published in Elector.
And avoiding that noise is totally standard electronics design practice. Talk to anyone designing medical systems, or sensitive industrial measuring systems.
And engineers around the world deal with and solve those problem every day. This is not rocket science.
As I said, I feel like we are heading down an endless debate over non-issues here. Why should I have to back up anything? It is you who have stated a theory/speculation/claim. If you want us to take it seriously, I suggest you provide some evidence for it.
If you claim there is a cow under the kitchen table, and I say "I don't think so, show it to me!", the best reply to that probably isn't "what, precisely, do you mean by 'think'?"
None of these work with USB 2 HIGH SPEED - I even put the speed in brackets so that it would be read & understood. You obviously didn't
And your point is?
I'm afraid all you offer is platitudes & hollow phrases. When you give some technical information to back up your statements (& accurate would be good too) then we might have a discussion.
The link about cognitive biases is definitely relevant. Anyone who thinks it isn't is smoking some pretty good stuff I would love to get my hands on.
It's a question of scale, I suppose. You must always have some ground/power noise contamination, but how much of a real problem is it? Can it be measured?
It's an old chestnut, but how clean was the recording chain? Presumably they had similar problems and dealt with them to a satisfactory level. If not, the DAC may not even be worth fretting over.
They are USB 2.0 compliant. I obviously didn't understand that you need more than 12 Mbps (I guess 192/24 isn't enough for you).
That the things you stipulate aren't issues in properly designed equipment, and most equipment is properly designed.
476.937 picofurlongs.
I am not the one making claims. You are.
The problems on the ADC side are different to the problems on the DAC side.
Julf claims to know what scale of noise is acceptable in a USB DAC so I guess he is the one to ask about this.
I think the bias is more on the subjective-objective line. I am all for letting people try for themselves, and I would definitely have tried both JRiver and JPLAY, but I don't use windows or a mac.
What a great reply. How could I not like a guy who responds like that?
I am actually a very likeable person. Just ask John
Given the Bizantine quality of your argument and the complete absence of supporting data (or did I miss that technical detail?), I thought the virtues of simplicity and the commonness of perceptual bias were beautifully relevant, John. There are more technical men than I engaging you with your "technical details." I decided to cut to the chase; You could easily be drowned in well-documented and well-accepted, examples of perceptual bias making people hear, see, smell, taste, believe what suits them, yet you can't seem to get a single measurement of the impact of your technical details at the output of the DAC. Perceptual bias is by far the more likely answer, practically and technically speaking, John.
Tim
I never quite got this Tinkerbell effect. Believing in what you want to believe is easy, not hard. Facing facts that don't serve your interests or support your argument, that's the hard stuff.
Tim
I agree. The way the Tinkerbell effect works is that if you believe in something, you start trying to convert other people to your belief, hang around people who share your belief, only hear and read things that support your belief - and very quickly it becomes a self-reinforcing circle, not just for you but for your whole environment. It is almost like an augmented version of groupthink.
I've tried 3 audiophile players -- Amarra, Pure Audio and a third thats name escapes me. Every one of them had legions of internet audiophile fans who heard what couldn't be measured. I compared every one of them in casual blind listening tests at home. I wanted them to work. Who wouldn't want to hear the kinds of dramatic improvements people described from a free download leading to a relatively cheap software plug-in? I wanted to hear a difference, and I did. The problem was, listening blind, I heard the difference as often, statistically speaking, when the audiophile player was not on.
I'll invest the time in testing a fourth when someone can measure a difference at the output of the DAC.
Tim
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