I saw in this thread reference to audiodiffmaker and wonder if anybody has got this to work right.
I have a scummy old squeezebox 1 and I've finally finished ripping my CDs to flac after two years and one HD crash ;) Backup is good to have, and I didn't... I'm not particularly enamoured of the SB1 sound though it's fine for the price, and I run it through an Arcam Black Box using optical - the same BB takes my Arcam CD player via coax. Most of my hifi is from the mid 1980s apart from the speakers and CD playing bits from the 1990s - Audio Research SP8 driving a NAP 250 into Naim SBLs. Has served me very well for the last 15 or so years though somewhat decrepit by modern standards. Anyway, I am in the market for something better than SB1 now I have finished the CDs and I read the arrogant S.O.B. on the Audio Critic referenced by Sean in that thread. The Audio critic reprises the 'all electronics sounds the same' doctrine. I have to give him the benefit of the doubt, if his audiodiffmaker works as he says it does, I should find a difference between the SB1 and the Arcam black box, or there is no audible difference. I tried this, recording the output of the SB1 into my preamp using phono Y connectors to patch the signal at preamp-in into a Sound Devices 702 set to record at 48k 24 bit, then repeating this using the Arcam Black Box fed via SB1 optical SPDIF (which comes out a lot louder than the SB1). The SD702 should be a lot better than a sound card, though it does mean you have to take the signal into audiodiffmaker as a pair of files, which is possible but not the usual way it seems ot be used. Anyway, I expected the difference, if any, to sound hard to hear in a hissy background. It isn't - the difference signal is massive, and sounds like a rather dull copy of the original with the very low frequencies boosted a lot, but I can easily follow the voice. I even tried swapping channels in case I had screwed up there (result, phasey echoey dull copy of the original) and feeding a copy of the original in for both signals (result - silence, phew!) Anybody tried this? I didn't match levels to more than 10dB on the recording because this is what I thought audiodiffmaker should do, I simply made sure they didn't go over the top. According to this, either the Audo Critic's thesis is wrong > Every low-distortion electronic signal path sounds like every other. The > equipment reviewers who hear differences in soundstaging, front-to-back > depth, image height, separation of instruments, etc., etc., between > this and that preamplifier, CD player, or power amplifier are totally > delusional. and it is wrong quite demonstrably, using the software he recommends to prove the contrary, or I screwed up royally in using audiodiffmaker, or audiodiffmaker doesn't propery compare the two files. I have listened to the source files, they sound like the first 30s of the same track to me. Anybody got experience of this program and testing a squeezebox? I know SB1 was probably not slim devices' finest product, but its output shouldn't be so measurably diferent from its spdif into the Arcam black box! FWIW I had the devil's own job locating Audiodiffmaker on the web - it is 'at the bottom of this page' (http://theaudiocritic.com/blog/index.php?op=ViewArticle&articleId=35&blogId=1) -- ermine ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ermine's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=12613 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=37352 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
