Pink Fish DAC Blind Test Part Two

[Ivor]

Never mind all that nonsense, John... Tell me more about using elephants as room treatment.

[tony]

Never mind all that nonsense, John... Tell me more about using elephants as room treatment.

I think you missed the point there Ivor they are for when you do blind testing. No way you can cheat and sneak a look with an elephant
sitting in front of your dac or telly or iphone

[jkeny]

stout defence there John but Ashley holds all the aces his arguments are very compelling and those secret blind abx tests seal the deal. At least with my new dac it is a very large box I can find some other storage use going forward. I have just ordered my new pioneer telly with dac.
God help the poor fools who bought the Chord Hugo at best that is now rendered a paper weight by the new startling facts.

Funny thing about Max and his new speakers he no sooner had the glowing subjective review written on PFM then they were up for sale on adverts.

He did what he always does - gathers opinion because he has none of his own, I'm afraid. Oh, except the one, which is very much an OPINION - about something he calls FOO (prize for best expansion of this acronym is a SoundBlaster card - guaranteed to be as good as $10,000 DACs).

Subsequently withdrawn probably on foot of him finding out this new startling evidence about all dacs sound the same.

Ah, buyers remorse or gathered too many conflicting opinions & his goldfish bowl exploded (Tony - you know what I mean - best to explain this for other readers)

I expect the dac experimentation thread will grind to halt now. No point in going any further on that route. It is a fools errant.

Ah well the poor deluded fools we are, we will probably keep going despite the skyscraper of evidence Max (& pal) have put in front of us.

[jkeny]

Never mind all that nonsense, John... Tell me more about using elephants as room treatment.

Well I believe it goes like this - the elephant in the room is the speakers but to avoid all the frequency distortion that this causes we need to treat the room with further elephants & test blind. The hardest part of all this is ignoring the farting of the elephants when listening blind - they really interfere with the sub-woofers.

I was told this by a well known speaker designer so it's gospel.

[Ashley James]

Before I bought half of AVI I was at ATC where much of my work was with large record studio control rooms. Because of the nature of the acoustics in these rooms, treatment was a must so I got to know the best acousticians and I experienced the dramatic differences they could make to often otherwise unuseable spaces.

Acousticians accurately measure rooms and calculate the size of traps needed to achieve an RT time that is uniform with frequency.

In my experience it is rare for homes to need treatment, we humans make our rooms quiet and relaxing to sit and talk in and it translates well except at low frequencies and in Britain people buy smaller speakers that work quite well in them.

If you're interested in learning about room treatment it's worth visiting the Sound On Sound website and reading their advice. Hugh and Paul are good friends, I've known them for many years and they know their stuff.

[jkeny]

Before I bought half of AVI I was at ATC where much of my work was with large record studio control rooms. Because of the nature of the acoustics in these rooms, treatment was a must so I got to know the best acousticians and I experienced the dramatic differences they could make to often otherwise unuseable spaces.

Acousticians accurately measure rooms and calculate the size of traps needed to achieve an RT time that is uniform with frequency.

In my experience it is rare for homes to need treatment, we humans make our rooms quiet and relaxing to sit and talk in and it translates well except at low frequencies and in Britain people buy smaller speakers that work quite well in them.

If you're interested in learning about room treatment it's worth visiting the Sound On Sound website and reading their advice. Hugh and Paul are good friends, I've known them for many years and they know their stuff.

Ashley - basically you are saying that you don't believe in RT for homes, so that leaves the only spending focus left is speakers - very convenient for your business. Max, after reading the 59 cognitive biases thread on PFM, can you find a cognitive bias that might apply to this view of Ashley's? I'll let others query you on your statements about the RT side of things - you have answered my question as expected.

I see no answer about your ABX tests - any details of DACs tested source used, results ?

[maxflinn]

John, I had expected that this thread might lead members to question some of the claims made by DAC manufacturers, the HiFi press, users etc.

Odd that it hasn't..

[Ashley James]

I think you need much more carefully what I actually said because you've misunderstood.

When we did ABX testing we used reed relay switching of electronically gain matched devices. It might have been op-amps or DACs or any of the things that the hot air merchants claimed sounded better. We take sound quality very much more seriously than you could comprehend, so we need real evidence, not blather from foo merchants.

Listeners were able to sit and relax and use an IR handset to swap between whatever was being compared without knowing what it was. Not only did we do it ourselves but also BBC and Classicial music sound men, studio professionals and enthusiasts known for their ability to spot differences. In no way were they prompted, the decisions were entirely theirs, so exactly as decreed in the text books.

This way it was infallible and the results repeatable. Competent listeners would always pick out which was best.

There is no better way of identifying tiny differences and as I previously stated, you wouldn't have a cat in hell's chance of telling an iPhone from a Hugo in one, even with the best headphones, never mind your present system.

[Fran]

No good can come of this thread lads - if you want to fight it out, go somewhere else - please don't carry arguments from whereever that is over to here.