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How far have DACs moved on?

Joe P said:
Simon,

Yeah, but when you’re home, listening to your tunes on your hi-fi, it’s always sighted.

Since you can’t be an unbiased machine, you’re stuck being a human with all the flaws and foibles that entails.

Joe
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What if your not human though? Or you were bit by a radioactive spider when an experiment went wrong?
 
The reason for the audible thump is part of the flinch reflex, the eye sees something it associates with a loud noise and involuntarily you enact a reflex mechanism that decouple the moving parts of the inner ear, its good for protecting your ears by about 40db, but it causes a low frequency thump. Its equal parts visually evoked audio response and tensor tympany reflex.
 
camverton said:
I don’t think I said that! As near neutral, to my way of thinking, is a good place to start but if deviance from that makes it sound more like the original than so be it.

Of course, the concert hall and our listening room is usually so different that obsessing about technical accuracy isn’t really that important - unless of course you are a manufacturer or dealer abusing a discussion to try and sell your particular style of product. In essence, I want my hifi to give me the the most convincing illusion of the original performance (I listen to classical most of the time). Why would any sane music lover want anything else?

My objection is when people with a manufacturing or selling agenda start trying to demean their opposition with silly insults. You did understand that, didn’t you? No, didn’t think so!
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So you actually agree with my point but you don't like me saying it.

LMAO
 
What does the startle response have to do with audio demonstrations?

Joe
 
Joe P said:
Simon,

Yeah, but when you’re home, listening to your tunes on your hi-fi, it’s always sighted.

Since you can’t be an unbiased machine, you’re stuck being a human with all the flaws and foibles that entails.

Joe
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Agreed Joe. But I must admit that due to my sighted bias, I initially read that as “flaws and foibles and entrails”.
 
Hook,

I was going to ask for details about the entrails, but it’s best this is left unasked and unanswered.

Joe
 
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Joe P said:
Hook,

I was going to ask for details about the entrails, but it’s best this is left unasked and unanswered.

Joe
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Joe, we should leave that up to our local haruspex.*

* An ancient Roman trained to practice a form of divination called haruspicy (the inspection of the entrails).
 
Wonder what debate on sound quality would be sparked if people knew that batches of DAC (or FPGA for Chord) chips may be made at different semiconductor fab companies with all the inherent differences in processes, aluminium grain structures etc etc. Not to mention they're encapsulated at different assembly plants and with different gold wire thicknesses (1.2 - 1.0um being a usual cost change), different leadframes (stamped or etched?) and different resins (potentially putting different stresses on the chip itself, in case that makes a difference).
Add to that the performance differences that are apparent when you run them through the Teradynes between batches, wafer and especially position ON the wafer.....

"Oh dear, you got an edge chip? from that batch? Ah, well we tweaked the test parameters a little for that batch. It meets spec but we had a 40% edge die fallout across the batch even after tweaking"
 
Joe P said:
What does the startle response have to do with audio demonstrations?

Joe
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The startle response is a cool example though. Foot tapping for example can illicit a subconscious response, or the excitement of plugging in a new component that you’ve been waiting for, swapping cables etc.
 
Yomanze said:
The startle response is a cool example though. Foot tapping for example can illicit a subconscious response, or the excitement of plugging in a new component that you’ve been waiting for, swapping cables etc.
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I'm not convinced there's a correlation between startle response and foot tapping...but I agree that some people seem be influenced by foot tapping sales people. I was at a Naim demo where most of the audience were swaying with the music as it moved from channel to channel, the crowd behaviour (mob psychology) made me want to vomit out of disgust. Maybe I'm more immune for some reason, I hated the swaying and I didn't produce the startle response either.
 
A favourite trick, with a mate, at hifi shows is sitting either side of someone who's totally into the demo and tapping the feet and giving subtle cues of enjoyment when they play the crap version, then sitting dead still apart from slowly but very purposefully shaking our heads when they swap to the better version/item.

It's great watching people squirm due to group think.
 
Yomanze,

Yomanze said:
The startle response is a cool example though.
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Yeah, apparently scaring the bejezus out of your cat by slipping a cucumber behind it while it was eating was all the rage in 2018. Probably unrelated to sighted or unsighted dems, though.

Joe
 
I think we can all agree then that Dacs have improved in performance, with the cravat that some older no expense spared Dacs can still sound sublime and possibly better newer Dacs.

While some like March Audio, feel that that it is virtually impossible to hear a difference between Dacs, despite selling Dacs, unless of course the March Audio Dac sounds better than the other Dacs, but how can it if all Dacs sound the same? ∞
 
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