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RE: Dreaming in Technicolor...

Posted by Doug Schneider on October 31, 2016 at 06:51:57:
So I actually put some work in here and found an article on your site. Is it this one linked below.
It appears you did do a comparison of sorts. Way to go!
But from what I can tell, it's two songs you used? One from Peter McGrath, the other Keith Jarrett. That's it.
There's little information you give, so let me ask:
1) Was this done blind, even to the point of what JA did?
2) I noticed they were played one after the other. The MQA second, from what I can glean. About 18 years ago it was demonstrated to me that if you play the same song twice in a row for someone, the second time almost always sounds better. Why? Familiarity to it. Our brain gets accustomed. This was astonishing for me to learn -- play the same thing twice in a row and the second time sounds different and better. I wonder what would've happened if you played the MQA first and the non-MQA second. Or if you did what JA did and played them randomly and tried to identify which was which. Nope, here's the song, here's the next one. Wow, doesn't #2 sound better?!?!
3) This brings out the cynic in me, but it's necessary if you're going to look at things critically -- were you able to analyze those files? You attribute the changes to MQA only. But how do you know that's all that was applied to the second track? Watch a mastering engineer work and the subtlest changes in, say, the high frequencies can change the perspectively wildly. I'd guess it's "track 1, now track 2." Believe me, I wouldn't be betting the farm on a demo like that.
That's why, with this latter point, we wanted to send files and then get them back and do proper listening (blindly, repeatedly) and analysis.
Back to your article. You listened to two tracks, back to back, and thought the second sounded better. It's not clear as to whether this was blind or not, or if you simply tried to identify one or the other over repeated trials. The MQA track was always the second track. Just two songs, hand-picked, played for you. Is this all correct? This is your "comparison"?
Doug