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4 shows now

Gang,

We did double blind testing in the following way;

1) 2 computers MacBook Pro and MacBook (MacBook Air at last RMAF) both dual boot Vista Ultimate/OSX with J River and iTunes (we did not use amarra).

2) We would play a WAV and a FLAC of the same song. We would play an ALAC and AIFF. 10 songs total... most of the time like 30-60 seconds these would be randomly mixed (i.e. sometimes FLAT PCM first [AIFF/WAV] sometimes lossless first). Each person was given paper to record the scores.

Conclusion...

a) 93% could tell the difference with the slower MacBook/Air. This is over 50 people now at more than 4 shows.

b) Using a faster machine in the same test brought that number down to 58%.

Remember gang we are using pretty pricey systems. Last years RMAF the system retail was over $70K

It's like this... someone asked me today when the Proton would be taken to 24/192. I said probably never.... as you really would not be able to hear any difference when going from 96 to 192. So why bother....

If you have an average system then none of this applies.

Hey do your own tests... all of these files were converted to and from and back and compared. They are bit identical...

An interesting note... I did a 1KHz sine wave in two formats ALAC/AIFF as I was on a mac. I then ran every freaken hog application (PS CS4... etc) I could find on my machine. The THD rose up for the ALAC at a much higher rate than the AIFF.

I am trying to work on a timing test. But for some reason my WaveCrest will not seem to lock onto a 1KHz square wave... I may have to try running this at 96K or 192K and then run a 10KHz square wave but I think timing is also to blame.

Either way it seems well evident that the processor performance has a significant determination of decoding on the fly which is a huge component of lossless files.

Thanks
Gordon
J. Gordon Rankin

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