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Archimago’s blind test - Do digital audio players sound different?
#1
https://archimago.blogspot.com/2019/01/i...o.html?m=1

Didn’t want to hijack @thumb5 Ian’s post - which is where I came across this test - so made a new one here.

Four sample track segments played on four unknown digital sources, which have then been captured, to see what people’s findings are when playing them back in their home hifi. Do they all sound the same or different? What are the differences? The full details in the link above.

I’ve now downloaded the files, and had a first listen. Actually the bit that took me the longest was regrouping everything into a single album in Roon so that it’s easy to compare at will (Roon initially thinks of them as alternative ‘versions’ of an album). I merged the ‘albums’ and renumbered the tracks sequentially 1-16 as per the screen shot.

I’m not going to say anything about my findings (and I’d suggest anyone else that tries does the same) just so as not to influence / skew results, but I will say I’ll probably only use a couple of tracks as they’re not all my cup of tea. At the end of the day all I wanted to see was whether I could hear a difference between the digital sources used.

Very interesting!

Particularly good for Devialet users especially given the often cited opinion that Devialets are the most transparent DAC/amps in the universe.

My free time is scarce but I’m going to try and listen some more over the coming weeks and submit my results before it closes. Can’t wait to see what the findings are.....

Closes April 30th.

   

>>> 1st Place Award: Devialet, last decades most disappointing technology purchase.  <<<

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#2
I have downloaded the set, but have not yet added files to Roon. Will do that 'soon' and make sure I have listened and commented before April 30. Exiting this...
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Devialetless!
Roon, ROCK/Audiolense XO/Music on NAS/EtherRegen/RoPieee/USPCB/ISORegen/USPCB/Sound Devices USBPre2/Tannoy GOLD 8
250 Pro CI, MicroRendu(1.4), Mutec MC-3+USB
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#3
Submitted!

>>> 1st Place Award: Devialet, last decades most disappointing technology purchase.  <<<

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#4
I tried this today.  It was actually quite good fun.  Following @Hifi_swlon ‘s instructions, I will keep my results to myself, but let’s just say there was one player in particular that I liked less than the rest.  It would be hilarious if it was an sMS-200ultra!  I look forward to the results.

I would recommend this as a bit fun over the Easter break, for those that have time.  Results have to be submitted by April 30th.
1000 Pro - KEF Blade - iFi Zen Stream - Mutec REF10 - MC3+USB - Pro-Ject Signature 12
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#5
I see that Archimago has now released details of the devices used in the blind test, as well as publishing the first set of results, see links below:

http://archimago.blogspot.com/2019/05/bl...gital.html

http://archimago.blogspot.com/2019/05/bl...gital.html

Looking at the posts here it looks like only three of us tried this and sent in some results.  Or looking at this more positively, 101 people reported results, meaning this forum alone accounted for 3 percent of the global total, not bad....

For me it was certainly interesting to listen to these devices in truly blind conditions.  Per my earlier post I mentioned that there was one device I particularly liked less than the rest, I can now advise that this was device D, which turns out to be a 2001 Sony SCD-CE775 mulit-disc CD player.

For the record, my selections were C, B, A, D in descending order of preference.

It is interesting for me to think back to listening to these files.  There are many things you could listen for, bass performance, sound stage, sibilance, and so on.  I recall at the time I was listening to one thing in particular, which was HF accuracy and any kind of noise or digital hash in the upper frequencies.  The only reason for this is that these aspects of sound happen to be my personal obsession of the moment, so when listening to the files these aspects were naturally prominent in my mind.

Now we have the results, it is therefore interesting for me to look at the measurements and muse over the possibility that something measured correlates to what I thought I was hearing.  A slightly problematic approach though, as it is impossible to prove any actual correlation.

I guess that I am happy that I picked the Oppo as being the best, on reputation and measurements it is probably the best item used in the test.  I am not getting too smug though, one aspect of the results that surprised me a bit is how close I put the iPhone to the Oppo.  Maybe with my expectation bias fully primed I could listen again and find all sorts of deficiencies with the iPhone, but the facts stand, when listening blind I did not find much of a difference between the Oppo and an iPhone 6.  All of this does provide food for thought though, as an example, the two devices I liked best were using minimum phase filters, the two devices I like least were using linear phase filters.  Does this relate to my HF listening observations?  Maybe, or maybe I am putting 2 + 2 together and getting 5, again a case of it not being possible to prove the correlation between cause and effect.  As an example, the Sony was also worst performer for jitter, so I expect that there are multiple effects working together  Although the LP / MP filter aspect is something I can easily investigate further, especially now the new HQPlayer 4 has additional minimum and linear phase filter options.  

One other thing occurs to me is that I actually own one of these devices, an iPhone 6.  (an iPhone 6 Plus, in my case)  Maybe I'll give it a try analogue to the Devialet, I just need to find a 1/4" jack to RCA adaptor, I'm sure I have one somewhere.  Crazy I know, but might be a bit of fun, and per the measurements the iPhone does not look that far behind the Oppo.

As a final thought, I wish now that I had spent more time and taken more notes during the blind test, it would have been quite enlightening and informative I think. I shall certainly try this next time Archimego comes out with another test.

There is a part three of the results pending, I will be interested to see if my observations were typical or if I am some kind of weird outlier, what's the betting that it is the latter? Shy
1000 Pro - KEF Blade - iFi Zen Stream - Mutec REF10 - MC3+USB - Pro-Ject Signature 12
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#6
(18-May-2019, 13:00)Confused Wrote: [...]
All of this does provide food for thought though, as an example, the two devices I liked best were using minimum phase filters, the two devices I like least were using linear phase filters.  Does this relate to my HF listening observations?  Maybe, or maybe I am putting 2 + 2 together and getting 5, again a case of it not being possible to prove the correlation between cause and effect.  As an example, the Sony was also worst performer for jitter, so I expect that there are multiple effects working together  Although the LP / MP filter aspect is something I can easily investigate further, especially now the new HQPlayer 4 has additional minimum and linear phase filter options.  
[...]

If you like MQA encoded music, then you might have preference for minimum phase filters. Though, i will like to hear what you think about the filters after trying them one by one with the same musing in HQPlayer.
Fanless HdPlex (HQPlayer) -> Merging Hapi -> Genelec 8351B
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#7
I see Archimago has just released his 3rd part where he elucidates the results:
http://archimago.blogspot.com/2019/05/bl...gital.html

I was one the the possibly five Devialet owners to do the test (the D440 /ProAc D40R in the listing, only 39 amps are mentioned, so there must be duplicates) and found the differences quite small and hard to discriminate , especially between my first 2 choices.    

My final vote was 1: C Oppo UDP-205 ,       2 : B iPhone 6,         3: D Sony SCD-CE775 SACD/CD player ,       4: A ASRock Z77 motherboard.

Echoing maxijazz, I DO like the sound of MQA, so it appears the minimum phase filters win out for me, as I preferred the iPhone over the Sony SACD Player. 

In the final analysis of 101 submissions, among the 70% who believed they could detect a difference,  the order for listeners  > 41 years old (which I am )  was C, D, B, A  - most favouring the Sony SACD Player over the iPhone 6. However Archimagio only calculates the vote for the last placed ASRock Z77 motherboard  to be statistically significant (@95%), so it is a great pity more people did not do the listening test.

Generally over the years when listening to new equipment for possible purchase at home, I have found the differences to be larger than I heard this time among these 4 devices. Perhaps the limitations of the experiment - listening to music D/A converted then reconverted on a pro grad A/D , then downloaded and D/A converted again before final amplification, may serve dampen the differences between devices. Or maybe D/A conversion has reached the point of diminishing returns. Overall a very interesting experiment none-the-less and thank to @thumb5 post alerting me to the test.
iTunes & TIDAL HiFi --> ROON on iMac --> ROON RAAT over Ethernet --> D440 Pro-->  ProAc  D40R floorstanding speakers (SAM)
Also:  Linn LP12/Ittok turntable Cables: Nordost Shiva power, Nordost Flatline2 speaker cable

Dublin,  Ireland
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#8
@maxijazz - I do not subscribe to Tidal, so effectively that makes MQA non-existent in my little world.  I have tried an MQA download out of curiosity, but as the difference between masters tends to be vastly greater than any differences between file format I really have no view on the sound quality of MQA.  Interestingly, HQPlayer now includes filters for use with MQA, poly-sinc-mqa-mp and poly-sinc-mqa-lp.  These are intended for people who do not have MQA enabled DACs (such as us Devialet owners) and do the first unfold in software.  Whilst these are optimised for mqa, HQPlayer developer Jussi has advised that these filters work well with non MQA hi-res content, and a few users have reported liking these filters.  A strange world we live in.  I will certainly be working through the various filters including the new HQLayer options

@Markpd - I have to agree with your last point.  Consider that when I was listening to the Archimago files, I was using HQPlayer with poly-sinc-xtr.  This is a linear phase fiter.  So, I was listening to various devices blind, and finding that I had a preference for those with minimum phase filters, whist using a playback system I have optimised using linear phase filters.  Quite how that works I have no idea! Confused

As to the Archimago results, they are quite fascinating, although I suspect the sample sizes are too small for any definitive conclusions, after all we have no idea how much care anyone was taking when performing the listening comparisons.  Looking at my notes, there were a few occasions I picked the same order as yourself, so we were not far apart. Looking at the results, I can see that my observations were not far of the median for the representative groups, with the exception that I tended to place the Sony lower.  As an example, in every instance I had A as either last or second last choice, but it was the Sony that trumped it for bottom place.  I notice that Archimego has looked at noise, and basically decided that choosing the quietest devices over the nosier ones is the "right" answer, but dismisses the fact that the Sony was the worst with respect to jitter.  I suspect I may have picked this up, because I was listening to the occurrence of very specific artefacts in the reproduction, almost certainly causing me to ignore other things.  It is impossible to know for sure though.  It shows how the subjective side of things is so important, and how I guess we all perceive things a little differently, and maybe even perceive things differently on different days, depending on where our focus may be.

One other thing, I have lovingly held on to my iPhone 6 Plus because I like the fact that it has a 1/4" headphone socket.  I have always thought it sounded pretty decent, albeit maybe a little underpowered.  Now I know that objectively it is actually very good, it should subjectively sound even better thanks to an increase in expectation bias, I may have to keep it forever!

I haver to say that I have enjoyed the test and the results far more that I was expecting, it has been quite enlightening.  I am now hoping that Archimego does something similar in the future, but maybe with kit more representative to that used at home, maybe a comparison of DACs from $100 to $20000.  Now that would be fun.
1000 Pro - KEF Blade - iFi Zen Stream - Mutec REF10 - MC3+USB - Pro-Ject Signature 12
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#9
For those that might be interested, I see part 4 of the results have been published.

http://archimago.blogspot.com/2019/05/bl...gital.html

A good read, and I can see that some of my subjective observations were agreed by others, but some not, which is I guess what makes this business so, ummm…, subjective.

There are some clear trends though, which might indicate that if you collect a number of shared subjective views in a blind test, you might end up with some clear indicators. Interesting stuff.
1000 Pro - KEF Blade - iFi Zen Stream - Mutec REF10 - MC3+USB - Pro-Ject Signature 12
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