evdplancke;687942 Wrote: > After a few days of reflexion, I finally have decided to share with you > the very interesting and quite embarassing experience I have done and > that is for me quite revealing of the subjective aspect of listening > tests. > > As some of you may already have read in my previous posts in the > audiophile threads, I used to be a believer of the sound quality > enhancements provided by several software and hardware tweaks of the > Touch setup. This belief was mainly founded on the many positive > listening experiences I made during many endless nights all this last > few months. > > These are the main improvements done on my system during this period > and the perceived benefits of it: > 1. Replace stock PSU by S-Booster BOTW linear power supply -> unveiled > the music, revealing a lot more details > 2. Apply TT2.0 and then TT3.0 -> much cleaner sound, less noisy, more > accurate timbers, better soundstage > 3. Use Draka FTP cable with shielding removed on a few cm -> less > harsch sound with airy and much brighter treble > 4. Use digital out through external V-DAC 1 and then 2 -> warmer, > richer, rounder sound > 5. Use Windows7 instead of NAS -> also warmer, richer sound > 6. Tweak priorities and buffersize -> improved soundstage and better > tone balance > Some of these improvements were also confirmed by a friend of mine and > by my wife. > > After all of that, I was so satisfied by the sound produced by my Touch > that I decided to build a secundary system around a brand new second > Touch. But first, once my second Touch arrived, I took the opportunity > to go back to the basics and put my two Touches side by side for a > listening test: one will all the mods applied, the other with the stock > PSU and config, connected by a low end cat5e patch cord. Both were in > sync, with LMS running on win7 and sharing the same DAC by swapping the > S-PDIF BJC coax back and forth from one to the other. Those who already > read my post on this test already know the outcome: this time I could > not notice any significative difference if any. > > This was just questioning all the results obtained the all year long > during endless white nights and raised a lot of confusion about what to > think of all these tweaks. > > But there comes the interesting part... something had changed in > between that may clarify why I had so contradictory conclusions: the > way I was testing, or to be more precise, the mindset I had during the > tests! > > Let me explain further: > > During all the time I spent tweaking my system, the main evaluation > criteria I used was: "does it sound different?". I was looking to some > relevant details of the music with my new tweaks and then looked if it > was better than without tweaks: is it brighter? warmer? more airy? > better soundstage?... and I always found extracts of mudic that > confirmed the improvements of the tweak. > > But for the side by side testing, questioned by the critiscism of some > members of the community about the relevance and the effectiveness of > the tweaks, I tried to change of mindset and changed my evaluation > method from "does it sound different? is it better?" to "does it sound > the same? is it even good?" and guess what...? the differences vanished > in the air!!! On every extract that sounded good on the tweaked Touch, I > tried to figure out: "how does it sound? what do I hear? is it warm? > full of harmonics? airy? with a good soundstage? clean? ..." and then I > looked on the untweaked Touch if it sounded the same... and it did!!" > > As a bottom line, I still don't know if there is a difference or not > but I feel like all these long listening tests were a waste of time, > energy and money! Don't understand me wrong: I would love to be able to > tweak my Touch to improve the sound quality of my system... but it is so > frustrating to see that there is such an expectation bias that it is > almost impossible to objectivate differences by simple AB tests. > > The reason to open this new thread is that I would like to give the > opportunity to other community members to share their testing methods > in order to sort out the best practices in critical listening > methodology. So feel free to contribute :-)
This is nothing new. It happens to me and many other hardened audio dudes all the time. The first time when I've noticed that, I was visibly shaken: after spending many tens of thousands of dollars on my audio equipment, I found myself waiting for my wife to finish shopping at a local store (Anthropologie), and was flabbergasted to hear the music pouring out of their ceiling speakers that sounded way better than anything I've ever heard on my system! I remember telling myself: Lord, if only I could get such sweet sounding music at home! Obviously, we're in it for the tweaking/hobby, but that does not necessarily translate into better sounding music reproduction at the end of the day. Reminds me of when I was hand making my own beer, pouring over the excruciating minutia working on my newest concoction, only to later on find out that pretty much any cheapo mass produced beer tastes way better. Duh! -- magiccarpetride ------------------------------------------------------------------------ magiccarpetride's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=37863 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=93380 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
