Originally Posted by
Mr. Widget
Hi Ian, you have made similar statements in the past. There is nothing in my post on this thread that suggests any level of technical competence or lack of. I would suggest you find my 20+ years of posting on this site to be technically insufficient to satisfy you.
My initial point regarding the audibility of a reduction in power supply introduced noise/distortion was that while we can measure improvements at some point they are inaudible. I did not state that I was able to definitively state at what level further improvements are inaudible. My point was that we trust our ears and I think that can be a mistake. Rusty is right... it is possible that removing the PS may improve the audible performance, I am just stating to be certain, we really need to verify by blind/double blind test.
I don't think you understand what I am proposing to evaluate.
The purpose of my exploration is to see if I and others can "hear" a digital pre/pro. In this case it will be a Lyngdorf MP-40 2.1. I will be comparing two Roon endpoints through a very high quality analog system. The comparison will be using the same digital source code through a Mark Levinson No 519 with its custom 32 bit link DAC and the Lyngdorf. The idea is that I want to know if a multi-stage digital pre/pro can audibly match the performance of a $25K No 519 which is at or near the state of the art.
Simply, I want to find out if it is possible to hear a difference between a dedicated high end streamer/DAC and a pre/pro that is substantially less expensive and has a much more complicated signal path. According to the subjectivists, the No 519 should be more "musical", "transparent", pick your adjective... according to the objectivists there should be no audible difference. I don't have an opinion and hence the reason for the exercise.
Since I am not a manufacturer or hobbyist interested in building electronics, I have no interest in how you measure differences in electronics, but I agree that psycho acoustics is an area that requires much more study.
My goal is pretty simple. I want to see if we can reliably hear ANY differences between digital circuits/DACs. For evaluation I am planning on using 5 tracks that Sean Olive uses for evaluation. If you have a specific recommendation of some cuts that have these subtle transients I'd be interested in adding them to the playlist.
I agree that some musical tracks are better at demonstrating differences than others and I also believe the differences can affect soundstage and not necessarily frequency response, or affect apparent "clarity" and not make obvious distortion or frequency response changes. I do not think noise, distortion, and frequency response improvements are the only changes that we are capable of hearing.
Widget