[bigshot]

He's trolling. This isn't about audio. It's a game. This forum allows people to play these kinds of games.

 

[Ghoostknight]

that disagrees with the facts/science.

your "facts" are reliably (reliably probably means lower ) proofable audible thresholds (by who knows who), nothing more, stop the false marketing bull

The ground box forum - our chap is also a user of crystals and bags of minerals on cable ends and speakers to improve the sound.

I think the rabbit hole has gotten impossibly deep with this one, so deep there is no light left and no way to turn back.

Tho, i dont mess around that much with it, just recently again, but yea also this can make a difference, but one has to be open minded about it, i know its hard to accept other opinions then your own guys


Just surprised how much of a cult feeling all this has...

 

[bigshot]

Play acting

 

[Ghoostknight]

there are so many things to consider, tho also this fact here:
if someone asks around here they get bombarded with "objective facts" (just like marketing to be honest, or maybe even worse because "science cant be wrong, they are FACTS!") then after not believing your "facts" you guys advice them todo DBT and if they are not part of the bell curve they are simply wrong and are "fools" for believing science is wrong..... The big question here is how you can get any more bias into one person?

Then the best part is, if someone advice to just take a listen.... ah the sighted bias... ohhh.....
People have to think for both factions and nobody seems to do, imo the case is clear, the truth lies somewhere between what objectivists and audiophiles say

since no one has reacted specific to this i also assume you guys are aware of what and how you do things around here....

Anyway... enough "science" forum for me, good luck in convincing people to join your club

 

[BS5711]

Just surprised how much of a cult feeling all this has...

You must be able to see how that goes both ways, surely. A group of guys being represented by you in this instance that have their own beliefs that fall outside of accepted science, that sounds something akin to a cult to me.

I said it before, you seem to have all the information available to you and you have shown that item by item you understand that information but your conclusion is not a logical extension of that information. I can only assume that is because you are so far down the rabbit hole that you don't think rationally anymore or something else is affecting rational thought that we are not privy to.

Or you just want to argue for fun ?

 

[theveterans]

I understand your point, you hear it so it can’t be wrong. On the face of it that is quite rational.

However it doesn’t remove the fact that human hearing isn’t the infallible listening machine that audiophiles believe it is.

Since you are interested enough in audio to mess with the stuff that you do it would not be much of a stretch to do a little research about the human auditory system and the affects of external and internal stimuli on our perception of sound.

Music can sound better on a nice day when you are in a good mood and relaxed.

I know music can sound better after a couple of beers but much worse after a couple of beers to many.

Music can sound worse if you are uptight or anxious or even if you listen intently and dissect it too far.

If given appropriate misdirection music can sound different from the exact same equipment only minutes apart if you think you are listening to different gear but actually aren’t.

The list goes on, you must have experienced some of this sort of thing.

If you are interested enough in audio to do the other messing around you talk about doesn’t it interest you to understand what you perceive as sound and why you perceive different sound when no actual difference exists like in some of my examples above, some of which I assume you have experienced yourself.

You can literally hear different sound just because of what you eyes convey to your brain. Take two minutes and look up “McGurk Effect” on You Tube. You can literally see/hear your auditory system being completely fooled by stimulus from your eyes. If your perception of sound is so easily fooled by a You Tube video doesn’t that make you wonder what else you are hearing that maybe isn’t real at all ?

If you are not interested that is fine, you are certainly not alone, but until you have a basic understanding of the unreliability of our auditory system how can you confidently say what actually makes a difference to sound and sound quality that you perceive ?

So far it seems you are interested in what makes the air move not what our ears and brain create from that moving air and what other stimulus might affect the perception of sound that our brain creates.

My opinion though is that on a bad day, I can't hear an iota difference between Tidal and Spotify. However, when stars are aligned on that day, Tidal often pulls ahead of Spotify in sound quality especially in terms of tightness in dynamics. However, for 99% of people and music usage, Spotify is more than enough. Heck, me personally I switch often between the two since Tidal still has a lot of tracks that's missing on Spotify

 

[Ghoostknight]

You must be able to see how that goes both ways, surely. A group of guys being represented by you in this instance that have their own beliefs that fall outside of accepted science, that sounds something akin to a cult to me.

well you will find the other kind of "extreme" mainly around audiophilestyle.com i think which im also not a big fan of... so thats that

imo cult behaivor has much to do with acceptance of minoritys or different opinions, you wont find this at either audiophilestyle, here in the science forum, or on ASR, and i guess here and there you find people of either cult

If someone hints to a text that says in this science forum personal opinions are forbidden, link me those and im gone, but i dont feel like needing to give in to the crap talk just because i have a different opinion than you guys

I said it before, you seem to have all the information available to you and you have shown that item by item you understand that information but your conclusion is not a logical extension of that information. I can only assume that is because you are so far down the rabbit hole that you don't think rationally anymore or something else is affecting rational thought that we are not privy to.

maybe im part of the audiophile cult because " i push the message " with writing my own opinion but honestly i believe i lie somewhere in the middle because i dont deny science completely... there are things to gain from "both cults", tho honestly i feel like i dont wanna be part of any one of them, this just makes you close-minded IMHO

and that is actually the reason why i from time to time linger around here...

 

[Ghoostknight]

My opinion though is that on a bad day, I can't hear an iota difference between Tidal and Spotify. However, when stars are aligned on that day, Tidal often pulls ahead of Spotify in sound quality especially in terms of tightness in dynamics. However, for 99% of people and music usage, Spotify is more than enough. Heck, me personally I switch often between the two since Tidal still has a lot of tracks that's missing on Spotify

if you come from mainly listening MP3, i also advice to listen to FLAC for a while (like 2-3 hours) and then switch back to MP3 .... going to lower quality after a while is most of the time more revealing than the other way around IME, also i hear with MP3 vs FLAC the most difference in bass, it might be more revealing to listen on full range speakers

 

[BS5711]

Why do you "push the message" here ?

You know that what you say is contrary to science and you have nothing to support your message except you hear stuff.

Nobody has any objection to you having beliefs about audio that differ to theirs but this isn't the place to try and get people to your way of thinking without robust data to back up your assertions, which of course you don't have. That then comes back to the classic audiophile stance of "I know what I hear" and from there we have this merry go round of conversation that is going nowhere.

Your bags of minerals on cables. You said it makes a difference. Where is the science that backs that up ? You believe hear a difference but you also know that you can perceive sound differences that don't even exist and yet you choose to believe the vague concept that science can't explain it rather than accept that it might be faulty perception. That is an utterly foreign mindset to me which is why this conversation is pointless, I literally don't understand how you extend the knowledge you have to the conclusion you do, to me that is utterly irrational, and yet you are far from alone.

All power to you in your quest to "push the message" whatever that might be, but how about we all give up flogging a very dead horse in this thread ?

 

[bigshot]

Groucho did it better...

 

[theveterans]

if you come from mainly listening MP3, i also advice to listen to FLAC for a while (like 2-3 hours) and then switch back to MP3 .... going to lower quality after a while is most of the time more revealing than the other way around IME, also i hear with MP3 vs FLAC the most difference in bass, it might be more revealing to listen on full range speakers

Makes sense as you build more long term brain memory (which here is described as pyschoacoustics bias unless it's under DBT ABX). For me on one of those perfectly aligned days, the difference can be immediate between the two regardless if I start with Spotify or Tidal on my listening session. The difference, whilst noticeable, isn't enough for me to dispel the state of getting lost in the music since the whole system and my hearing itself is at their peak that everything sounds great out of it (even YT videos!)

 

[sander99]

this is NOT what you get with some devices/dacs that sound like crap (un-natural), consistently...

Consistency or repeatability does not imply that there is no bias at work. If for whatever reason - at some momement - a belief is seeded in your head, consciously or subconsciously, that A sounds different from B then your brain can consistently make you "hear" that difference when you know which of the two you are listening to.

tho if it ends up invalidating what i heared before it probably still doesnt convince me but proofs my point of being right about DBT... since i "know" the chance that thousands of audiophiles live in their own world imaging things is fairly low imo

And that is where you are wrong. Or actually, it is not so much audiophile imagining things, and it is not so much audiophiles specifically, it is just how human perception works: the brain creates an experience based not only on actual sensory data, and not at all alone based purely on the sound going into your ears, but on many things more.
As explained in this subforum many times, this holds for all humans. The difference between audiophiles and the science oriented people here is just that the latter are aware of this fact, and the former are either not aware or not willing to believe and accept it.

 

[bigshot]

For me on one of those perfectly aligned days, the difference can be immediate between the two regardless if I start with Spotify or Tidal on my listening session.

Psychoacoustic compression algorithms don't alter dynamics. So either you aren't putting what you hear into the proper words, there are small level differences between samples, the mastering is different, or your sighted comparison is allowing bias to creep in subconsciously.

If it varies from track to track, it's probably mastering differences. If it's consistent no matter what song you play, it's volume levels or bias.

 

[theveterans]

Psychoacoustic compression algorithms don't alter dynamics. So either you aren't putting what you hear into the proper words, there are small level differences between samples, the mastering is different, or your sighted comparison is allowing bias to creep in subconsciously.

It's not under DBT. Bias is definitely there on the most subconscious levels. For the most part, I don't have nervosa that I should just play lossless since 320 kbps OGG vorbis is 99% transparent to me with sighted subjective listening unless there are obvious mastering differences

 

[bigshot]

It's not under DBT. Bias is definitely there on the most subconscious levels. For the most part, I don't have nervosa that I should just play lossless since 320 kbps OGG vorbis is 99% transparent to me with sighted subjective listening unless there are obvious mastering differences

I have Amazon and Apple. I haven't compared them to each other, but I've found songs on one album on Amazon that sound very different than the same song on another album or compilation. Any time I've noticed that, I check what albums Amazon is pulling it from and one of them has always been remastered while the other is an older release.

I admit, I don't worry much about streaming sound quality that much. They all sound good, but they aren't my primary source of music. I have a CD collection that matters most to me for that.

It's nice to be talking about the topic again instead of listening to hot air escaping an oral orifice.