|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
In Reply to: This is to Phil Tower and whoever else cares.... posted by Monstrous Mike on November 13, 2002 at 14:29:53:
That's an interesting perspective, Mike. Dr. Toole's work gets sited by folks quite often, yet was directed in a different area and for a different purposes. I'm also aware of the work being done on codecs as jj used to do a lot that at AT&T. The problem for general audio is that it's extremely expensive and has no real obvious return on investment.Compression schemes for trans-Atlantic phone calls and cell phones and so forth have an obvious benefit. The research is to come up with schemes that are acceptable and not noticeable in general. The point is not to produce a perfect signal as much as to produce the most compression without a noticeable loss. It's quite different.
Anyway, for cables, doing this type of research is too expensive and likely of little benefit to the manufacturer. It's like the old Pepsi vs Coke commercials. People don't buy taste tests anymore. On top of that, it can be extremely system dependent and preference oriented.
Besides, for the masses buying $200 receivers and $50 speakers, come on, these folks won't even spring for the $20 Monster cables.
Follow Ups:
While much of the DBT work recently has been for coded and otherwise processed signals, there is still a core of work working on human auditory sensitivity. This is not "good enough", this is "threshold of detection" work.Some coding systems, by the way, are very close to that threshold as well. While I've had, previously, some people insist very strongly that the coded signal was "obviously awful", it was interesting to note that the "obviously awful" signal was always the one that they thought was labeled coded.
Need I say that in such circumstances, their assumptions are often, well, not in line with reality.
Now, bear in mind that this is going during ***demonstrations***, not during any training or test sessions. Training and test sessions must be completely on the level.
JJ - Philalethist and Annoyer of Bullies
You got it! Most of the DBT testing of mass market digital stuff is going in the russian direction...goodenuff and his four cousins. They are not looking for comparisons between a live performce and reproduced sound, but rather in the direction of is this crap any worse than that other crap. A completely minimalist approach.I still contend that DBT will prove nothing else than the fact that cables are different and for anybody who is already convinced of that fact it is just a big whoppie doooo. So what.
I think in respect to cables, the _only_ point of dbt is to determine if there is an audible difference. I still do not know if that test has been done, everyone seems to have a different excuse!
You yourself can conduct a simple test. Take a 100K worth of speakers and components, wire them with RS cables ZIP cord, listen to for a week, then wire it with 20K worth of top notch cables, listen to it, if you hear no difference sell your gear :-)
Well, I got the 100K in equipment, now if I could only afford the RS zip cord.
;-D
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: