Tír Na HiFi

I find 2.66 SSE2 dqa dqa unique in that it is the only player that renders the intro to one of my test tracks correctly (at least I think it is correct).
The test track is track 1 "Court & Spark" from Herbie Hancock's "Letters to Joni".
With all other players (including previous versions of MQN) I hear a brief, varying, low level hiss noise after the strike of each piano chord in the opening section.
I may have talked about this here before & asked about it. Some piano players that I know, heard it & said that it was probably the noise of the pedal usage. It never sounded like a realistic sound to me - I always thought that it was some sort of anomaly, either in the recording or in the playback. Not so long ago I began to wonder if it was noise modulation in the playback system.
Anyway. this version of MQN is the first time that it is gone, I think - I haven't checked it on my main system just through headphones via my laptop.

Here's the intro for all to listen https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BzRUtXo ... sp=sharing

jkeny wrote:

DaveF wrote:If equipment wasnt issue I'd be inclined to take the digital out just before the DAC and run it into a high speed ADC board connnected to a FPGA PCI-E card in a PC. Take several sample sets and use Matlab to do all the fancy analysis offline to your hearts content.
The ADCs would have to have a sufficient noise floor and high ENOB(effective number of bits) to make sure we have enough resolution.

Using scope to look at a stream in real time might be tricky to get a stable trigger.

But that will only be examining the digital logic signal, not the electrical waveform that is the physical form of this logic signal.
It's in this waveform that the noise is likely to be embedded & it's interaction with the USB receiver & downstream circuit may well be where there is some insight to be gained?

DaveF wrote: Sorry, typo in my earlier post. I meant of course taking the analog signal after the DAC otherwise no point in have an ADC! :-))
If the ADC has a high enough resolution we should be able to see the noise content of the signal also. If the PC is generating certain noise tones that are in any way dominant over the noise floor we should be able to see this.

jkeny wrote:

DaveF wrote: Sorry, typo in my earlier post. I meant of course taking the analog signal after the DAC otherwise no point in have an ADC! :-))
If the ADC has a high enough resolution we should be able to see the noise content of the signal also. If the PC is generating certain noise tones that are in any way dominant over the noise floor we should be able to see this.

Yea & I didn't read your post carefully enough to realise your mistake - sorry.
I know what you say makes sense but these are the sort of tests that Mithco & others have done already which have proven to be of no value in revealing differences (or as they have interpreted the results as very useful in "proving" that no differences exist)
I somehow feel that we are missing some psychoacoustic issue that is not being revealed in these tests. Some noise modulation that is below the noise floor is all I can think of. How would this be measured?

And, yes, we can hear below the noise floor

jrling wrote: jkeny - the link I posted of Mitchco's test was comparing JRiver Win to JRiver Mac OS, so I am no that surprised they showed no difference. Both Intel-based CPUs but not nearly the same processors unfortunately.

But are you saying that someone has tried his type of test on different versions of MQn? If so, I don't think that I have seen the results?

Surely we need to eliminate the possibility that there may be demonstrable differences above the noise floor first?

We learn to recognize certain abstract aspects of sounds like we learn the more easily describable stuff like name of notes, instruments and effects like compression. Listening to the rest, whatever you want to call it, is a sort of listening that lends itself particularly well to intuitive work.

Think that's the primary reason many feel blind tests to be artificial compared to normal listening. It's enforcing the square world of words and truth tables onto the wordless language.

Have learned to somewhat successfully tune out/in when doing blind testing. The ABX results from listening consciously to this or that aspect of sound is consistently about 10-15 dB worse than when I do the "lateral listening".