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In Reply to: RE: Augmented sound... posted by AbeCollins on June 30, 2012 at 11:15:53
"Please let us know what the exact standard is for a component or complete system that does not have an 'augmented sound' and is not designed to accommodate personal taste?"
Quite simple. Take a cable. Run it between two devices. Listen to the sound. Then plug two of these cables in tandem. (Works with XLR as these cables have one end of each gender.) The goal is for the sound of the two cables configuration to exactly match the one cable configuration. Now if you hear a difference, then it may be due to the extra connectors. In that case, compare a short and long cable, otherwise the same except for length.
In the case of a DAC it's a bit harder. However, one can do bypass tests by listening to the analog signal input to an ADC and comparing it with the analog signal out of the DAC. They should sound the same. If not, then either the equipment or the digital format is not transparent. There are two problems with this simple bypass test. First, it won't detect some kinds of clock jitter because the two clocks are running in real time and are synchronized. Thus the ADC and the DAC could have cancelling distortion. Second, there can be other cancelling distortions, e.g. offsetting errors in frequency response. But here there is an absolute standard of how things are supposed to sound, the only difficulty is attributing any errors to specific components.
For a complete system, the system has to be complete. This means the recording portion of the record - playback system must be present as well as the playback portion. Many pro audio items are designed with the intention of being sonically transparent. Others are designed to add "color". Usually, the product marketing literature makes it clear what the design philosophy is. Consumers of pro-audio equipment are, in general, much more knowledgeable when it comes to audio technology for various reasons. Probably the most important one is that they make recordings as well as listen to them and hence have a handle on the entire process of recorded sound.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Follow Ups:
My point is, there is no standard for how a component, software, or an entire system should sound, whether on the recording end or the playback end.
It is ALL dependent on someone's interpretation . What might be accurate to you may not be accurate to me. So in the end, it is ALL entirely subjective and up to individual preference and taste.
Some comparisons are dependent on interpretation. That's is the case, for example when dealing with preferences between different sounding systems. However, if one is dealing with issues of difference, this need not be the case. If one person out of 100 can reliably hear differences between two systems then one must admit that these systems sound different. That the other 99 people hear nothing is irrelevant, they may be deaf, untrained, lazy, etc. Note that if one is to use statistical arguments to say that some people heard a difference, one must deal with the "file drawer" problem, e.g. if 100 deaf people were to guess whether they heard differences then one would expect roughly 5% to "hear statistically significant differences" and this would be an obviously bogus use of statistics. Proper experimental design can deal with this statistical problem but finding these low level effects will still require an extensive, and hence expensive, study.In the event that a test demonstrated that no one out of a large sample was able to hear a difference between a straight wire and a combination of an ADC followed by a DAC then one could include that on this occasion, in this system, the test subjects were unable to demonstrate they could hear a difference. There would be no need for any interpretation to reach such a conclusion. One could still argue how this conclusion might be extended, of course. Furthermore, it might be that brand A's combination of ADC and DAC was transparent, brand B's combination of ADC and DAC was transparent, but when the output of a brand A ADC was fed into the input of a brand B DAC the resulting system was not transparent. Without additional tests or measurement it would not be possible to say which brand was "correct". (This is not an academic issue, by the way.)
IMO, audiophiles who do not have experience making and playing back live recordings of acoustic music are simply unqualified to comment on these matters. They are only participating in half of the true hobby.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Edits: 07/01/12
Tony,
"IMO, audiophiles who do not have experience making and playing back live recordings of acoustic music are simply unqualified to comment on these matters. They are only participating in half of the true hobby."
True... To a point... but must one also rely on memory for the comparison?
Unless you have the live source in the same room.
regards
Bob
The important sonic differences use long term memory.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
That's all very nice but completely impractical with regard to my original comment.
"Please let us know what the exact standard is for a component or complete system that does not have an 'augmented sound' and is not designed to accommodate personal taste?"
The constant bickering here over what computer or OS 'sounds best' is mostly mental masturbation for those who get off on such things. Just as it is for amps, preamps, speakers, cd players, etc., there is no 'best', no 'standard'.
Since there is no standard, it boils down to personal preference. Otherwise, we would all be building our systems with the same gear.
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