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In Reply to: RE: Argh posted by Scrith on June 03, 2007 at 13:15:29
*** Oh well, I guess we get to keep living with those who have the seemingly ridiculous notion that FLAC playback sounds different than WAV until I find some other comparison mechanism. :( ***
Here I was thinking it's great that someone has an open mind, but this line now makes me suspect you are only interested in debunking theories you don't believe in. Sigh :-(
Anyway, my thoughts on this are: suppose that FLAC playback sounds different from WAV due to changes in jitter, EMI/RFI, whatever. Note: I am not claiming this is 100% true, but it seems plausible.
Then any attempt to measure this difference using software based ABX switching will affect jitter, EMI/RFI etc. So in other words you are changing what you are trying to measure.
Maybe better to have two identical machines side by side - one playing FLAC, the other playing WAV, and have a friend randomly switch between the two. But then you are likely to encounter differences between the machines, which may be greater than the difference between FLAC and WAV playback.
I don't think you will be able to easily prove or disprove the hypothesis. So relax and enjoy the music.
Follow Ups:
I was the one who said that, on the Linn site, short previews of 24/88.2 WMA appeared to sound different , and better than 24/8.2 FLAC. This is with the new Gilcrist album where one can try different levels of resolution before buying.
This then exploded into a FLAC v WAV argument whereas anyone could have gone to the website and hear for themself. If it was my imagination, they were invited to say so. The fact that no one seems to have done so, seems to support what you have said.
I actually compared the downloaded the WMA 24/88.2 files to decompressed WAV files using Audition 1.5 and compared the two. The WAV file has better treble although not done listening in my hifi system yet; just through my well known Terratec 2496 card and decent amplification system thru my download computer.
Can I invite people to try on the Linn site?
Actually I started this thread before reading your post over on the digital forum (otherwise I probably would have posted it there, and it would have been the FLAC vs. WMA test). :-)
I tried downloading the test files from the Linn site for comparison and it *seemed* like they sounded a bit different to me, but without some type of ABX test there is no way for me to quantify exactly how different they are to my ears on my equipment (if at all).
My personal position on ABX testing is a bit mixed. On the one hand, I have incorrectly concluded that two different items sounded different (in this case it was cables), only to come to the realization during an extended A/B test that they sounded exactly the same (I had to switch back and forth at least 50 times on a song that I was SURE I could tell the difference on before formalizing an A/B test setup with a special switchbox set up for blind testing).
But I've also been burned by ABX testing. For example, during one test I couldn't tell the difference between two settings in Foobar2000 despite a lengthy comparison. But I ended up keeping the new setting (a certain resampling DSP in Foobar2000) without thinking about the test much for a couple of weeks, until one day I heard something in a familiar song that sounded different for some reason. I then started up the A/B test again using that part of that song and, voila, I could clearly hear the difference.
And this is the thing the people whose posts I read at HydrogenAudio often fail to consider: an ABX test does not PROVE that the two test subjects are the same, it only shows that, for one particular song and one particular set of ears using one particular set of equipment in one particular location, there was or was not an obvious difference. I believe the best test is one like I was trying to set up here, where numerous people use the same methodology to test the same two hardware, software, or data format options, after which we might begin to draw some conclusions if enough people respond with valid test data.
Foobar sounds different with different ASIO plugins, buffer settings etc etc. It is difficult to use it as a neutral tools for comparisons. also ABX tests are just what they are; short term statistical impressions - much longer long term listening is to me more important.
If two compressed versions of a 24/88.2 track sound different, and you seem to confirm this, it is more profitable to find out why, rather thamn try to quantitfy that difference statistically.
My own short experiences with FLAC is that the the hirez files I possess (including download on hirez tape transfer) do not sound good even played back on a high end computer/dac system and imagination or not, I prefer uncompressed WAV or AIFF, even though the files are massive. With HD cheap, who cares?
My other comment is that. to hear clear differences, one needs to be very creful with PC settings and the quality of the replay chain. The higher the quality, the easier it is to hear differences.
You bring up a really good point which a lot of people fail to appreciate: our ability to spot differences in ABX testing depends on how well we have trained our ears to recognise the specific differences.
For example, because I play around with resampling a lot, I can easily recognise the sort of artefacts produced by a resampling algorithm. I can also hear some types of distortion (like clipping for example) more than perhaps an average person, because I do a lot of recording.
Some of the guys on HydrogenAudio (guruboolez for example) have obviously trained their ears very well to be able to spot tell tale artefacts from various lossy compression schemes. Even I, with little or no training, can spot the warbliness that you get in low bitrate MP3, the slight ringing in Vorbis, and high frequency attenuation plus noise from WMA.
The problem with ABX tests involving a lot of people is that most of them won't be "trained" to spot differences, so the likely result is that on average no differences are reported.
There's been a few "studies" over the past years that have tried to show for example differences between amplifiers are not audible, or there's no difference between SA-CD and DVD-Audio, or no difference between SA-CD and CD etc. and they all suffer from the same flaw.
Even the student thesis from a year or so ago that tried to show there is no difference between DSD and PCM failed to appreciate that for a small number of people in the test (I think it was only 1-2 people) - they *were* able to tell the difference in a statistically meaningful way. However, instead of exploring *why* these people could hear a difference and most couldn't, the study decided to ignore them and suggest differences between DSD and PCM are not significant.
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