Version: Firmware 13.1.3 + DOS 2.2.4 Date: 2019-02-12

[David A]

@David A , with respect, I think you're missing my point.  At the risk of taking this thread further off topic...

It's possible that terminology is the problem here.  I thought we were all using the word "difference" to mean "a noticeable change in sound quality"; apologies for seeming obtuse if that's not what you meant.

Since sound quality is purely subjective, any report of sound quality difference is unique to the individual(s) who did the listening.  Therefore if they hear a difference, or do not, then the (subjective) difference is unarguably there or not, as the case may be.  (Unless they are deliberately mis-reporting, hence the caveat in my previous post -- not that I think there's any of that going on here!)

One person's subjective experience doesn't give any significant information about whether anyone else may or may not hear a difference, or indeed whether there is an objective -- that is, measurable in principle, even if perhaps not in practice -- difference in output from the system (say, at the point where sound waves enters the listener's ear).

Of course if you have enough listeners independently and repeatably reporting a sound quality difference, that starts to build evidence that there may be an objective change in output of the system, but in principle listening tests can never answer that question with certainty.  Conversely there may be an objective change in output that no-one ever reports hearing.

In any case, there is no "right" or "wrong" and nothing to "prove" either way about whether or not any given listener hears a difference, since the experience is personal and subjective.  In particular there is no conflict or mystery to be resolved if some listeners do and some do not hear a difference, whether or not there is an objective change in output

We're definitely seeing things differently.
 
I make a distinction between a difference in sound and a difference in sound quality. No one would argue that we can't hear differences between vinyl and CD playback (surface noise, anyone?) but someone can listen to both, hear the difference, and say that though they are different they think the sound quality is identical/similar. A difference in sound doesn't mean that the listener will hear a difference in sound quality but if someone says they hear a difference in sound quality then they're definitely hearing a difference in sound because there can't be a difference in sound quality if there is no difference in sound while 2 different sounds can be regarded as equally good or bad if their different strengths and weaknesses balance out.

If we're talking tests then we have to be talking about tests for differences in the sound. Sound quality is subjective as you say and we can't test for subjective differences. We can test for differences in sound and we can try to relate any differences we find to people's subjective reports of sound quality but we can't test for differences in sound quality, we can just gather and analyse the reports people make.

And there is something to prove in proving that people can hear a difference. First, it shows that an actual measurable difference is present and then, since not all measurable differences are audible, proving that people can hear it shows that the difference is not only actual but audible and that stops all of the arguments over whether or not people can really hear what they're claiming to hear when they say there is a difference. Proving the existence of an actual difference proves which statement made about whether or not there is a difference is right and which is wrong, and proving that people can  hear a difference means that the subjective impressions of listeners have value when it comes to deciding which you want to use.

And if you don't think that analysis of subjective impressions and of what people prefer have value, then just look at any electronic room correction system using DSP to tailor the sound to a particular target curve because almost without exception the target curve being used will be based in part on studies of listener preferences. Preferences are certainly individual and they aren't right or wrong, but they do have value and knowledge of the preferences of a large enough group of people can be and is used to make products work better so data on preferences definitely has value.

I definitely agree we're both looking at this from very different perspectives.

[Pim]

We're definitely seeing things differently.
 

Shouldn't that be 'hearing' things differently? 

[David A]

^ "thinking " about things differently?

I *KNOW* that I'm thinking about things right, I just *DON"T KNOW" if I'm hearing them right. Thinking is so much easier to do right than hearing :-)

[thumb5]

@David A, without wanting to appear perverse, what exactly do you mean by "sound" then?  Do you mean pressure waves in the air, or the experience of hearing them?

If the former, then I think I follow your train of argument, except that then it is certainly possible for people to hear a difference in sound quality when there is no difference in sound.  That can happen for any number of reasons which don't need to be rehearsed here.

If the latter then I really don't understand the distinction you're making between "sound" and "sound quality"; it's all the same subjective experience which is unique to the individual.

Finally, to clarify, I didn't say (and certainly didn't mean to imply) that people's experience of differences in sound quality has no value -- on the contrary, that's really all that matters from the point of view of hi-fi/audio as a leisure activity.

[David A]

@David A, without wanting to appear perverse, what exactly do you mean by "sound" then?  Do you mean pressure waves in the air, or the experience of hearing them?

If the former, then I think I follow your train of argument, except that then it is certainly possible for people to hear a difference in sound quality when there is no difference in sound.  That can happen for any number of reasons which don't need to be rehearsed here.

If the latter then I really don't understand the distinction you're making between "sound" and "sound quality"; it's all the same subjective experience which is unique to the individual.

Finally, to clarify, I didn't say (and certainly didn't mean to imply) that people's experience of differences in sound quality has no value -- on the contrary, that's really all that matters from the point of view of hi-fi/audio as a leisure activity.

First, "sound": there's probably a fair bit of both meanings in what I wrote at various points and yes, I agree that people can hear a difference in sound quality when there is no difference in sound, but only when they do "hear" a difference in sound. If they don't "hear" a difference, they can't hear a difference in sound quality.

My point is this. We need to distinguish between 2 things, especially when it comes to testing to prove what is being reported.

Saying that there is a difference in the sound is reporting a subjective experience as you say, but you are reporting a subjective experience which should be able to be verified by objective testing. When it comes to saying that the sound you hear has certain qualities (warmth, brightness, detail, etc) you are reporting a subjective experience which may be able to be correlated with the results of objective testing because its a subjective report of characteristics of the sound. Saying that the sound quality is better/worse/equal, reports a subjective assessment rather than an experience and can't be verified by objective testing. There is an important difference in the reports. We can in principle objectively verify many subjective experiences but we can't objectively verify subjective assessments like better/worse

So, once we start talking about testing in order to verify reports that say something is producing a difference in sound, we have 2 ways of verifying that statement. The first is to undertake measurements of the sound which means the sound pressure level in the air. The second is to undertake listening tests in order to determine whether people can actually reliably distinguish a difference. 

There are problems with both of those sorts of tests. When it comes to measuring the sound pressure level we're faced with the fact that microphones don't respond to sound the way people do. There's a pressure sensitive device in a mic, and we have a pressure sensitive mechanism in our ears, but when we report what we hear we aren't just reporting the frequency and pressure differences a mic picks up, we're reporting the result of those differences after they've been processed by our brain which does things with the frequency and pressure differences from 2 ears which receive some of those differences at slightly different times because sound arrives at different angles to our head and there are differences in the length of the path the sound has travelled. That difference in time, and the slight differences in pressure they cause, tell us things that you can't tell from the signal output from a single mic. Yes, we can set up 2 mics on a dummy head and start to capture that sort of info but now the measurement process is becoming more difficult and our hearing has developed in ways which give us information which we may be able to identify from a feed from 2 mics but we need to know how to combine the information in those 2 feeds in order to be able to relate that information to what we hear. We don't always know how to do that.

When it comes to listening tests we also have problems. First, not everyone has ears that are equally sensitive/accurate. We say very glibly that we can hear from 20 Hz to 20 kHz but those numbers aren't exact and they don't apply to everyone. It becomes increasingly difficult to find people who can actually hear 20 kHz the older they are, and I've seen comments that most people over the age of 20 or so can't hear 20 kHz. Age affects hearing range and so does noise related hearing loss and other conditions. Then thee's the fact that what we pay attention to is important. We notice things when we're paying attention that we don't notice when we aren't and paying attention to one thing can mean that we don't notice other things which we could otherwise notice. How we listen and what we listen to in the sound arriving at our ears makes a difference. When it comes to listening tests we know that not everyone is going to hear something that can actually be heard so the results of listening tests are based on a level of probability. We accept that something is audible if enough people in a test sample can identify it correctly often enough to make it extremely unlikely that the correct identification isn't a random possibility but I've heard of one case where group tests didn't reach that level of reliability but one person managed to show that there was an audible difference by identifying the difference correctly with 100% accuracy every time it occurred.

It's certainly possible for beliefs to influence what people report hearing and people can report hearing a difference that they believe exists even though it doesn't exist but it's also possible for people to report not hearing a difference they don't believe exists when it does in fact exist. People make both those sorts of mistake. Measurements can show no difference but there is no difference to measure if you don't measure what is different. For example THD used to be reported as a simple % measure at rated amplifier output but that measurement doesn't show differences at output levels other than the specified output and it doesn't show differences in the harmonic structure of the distortion so there was a time when a lot of people said they could hear no difference between 2 amps with identical frequency response and the same THD measurement while others said they did hear a difference, and some people claimed that there could not be an audible difference between 2 amps with the same measurement while some people claimed there was a difference between amp A and amp B which had that same simple THD measurement. We all know how that argument panned out. There were audible differences and they didn't show in the measurement because the measurement being relied on wasn't the right measurement.

Science works in funny ways at times but science always starts with observations. Sometimes those observations are measurements which can't be explained by current knowledge at the time and sometimes those observations are people's reports of hearing something which isn't shown in the measurements being made. Sometimes the observations turn out to be wrong and sometimes the current knowledge or the measurements being made aren't complete and the observations lead to new discoveries which show that the observations were correct.

We can all make mistakes about whether or not there is a real difference for us to hear between 2 things like RAAT and AIR. There either is or is not a difference to account for the difference in observations. If there is a real difference then in principle we can measure it but just because we can measure it in principle doesn't mean that any specific set of tests we do will measure it because we simply may not do the right test, and it also doesn't mean that at the moment we can measure it. Its always possible that we need a new test to measure that specific difference.

Too many people think that all subjective reports can't be verified, either in part or in total, and too many people think that the measurements they have are the right measurements and capture everything. Neither belief is right and there's a lot more to finding out whether the people who think that there are no audible differences between RAAT and AIR or the people who think that there are audible differences between them are right, and also to finding out whether the differences, if they are shown to exist, can be correlated in some ways with the observations which are being made about what the difference actually sounds like but when it comes down to which one sounds better, if there is a difference, then that's the sort of subjective report which measurements can't provide information on.

Sorry for the long post but the issues aren't quite as simple as your questions seem to suggest.

[thumb5]

Saying that there is a difference in the sound is reporting a subjective experience as you say, but you are reporting a subjective experience which should be able to be verified by objective testing.

No, there is no requirement that a subjective experience should be able to be verified by objective testing.  It may be caused by any number of factors which may or may not include objective causes.  Hearing doesn't always give the same (subjective) experience for the same (objective) stimulus.

So, once we start talking about testing in order to verify reports that say something is producing a difference in sound, we have 2 ways of verifying that statement. ...

There are problems with both of those sorts of tests...

Agreed.  I'm not arguing that such tests need to be done, because there is no need to validate a subjective experience.

Sorry for the long post but the issues aren't quite as simple as your questions seem to suggest.

That sounds a touch condescending, if you don't mind me saying.

[ghubregtse]

Does anyone have the same issue I do atter the update which is the first tiny fragment of the song is not audible so depending on if a song starts quick you'll notice this?

Yes, I have found exactly the same... anybody else experienced it, or have an explanation?

[David A]

Saying that there is a difference in the sound is reporting a subjective experience as you say, but you are reporting a subjective experience which should be able to be verified by objective testing.

No, there is no requirement that a subjective experience should be able to be verified by objective testing.  It may be caused by any number of factors which may or may not include objective causes.  Hearing doesn't always give the same (subjective) experience for the same (objective) stimulus.

So, once we start talking about testing in order to verify reports that say something is producing a difference in sound, we have 2 ways of verifying that statement. ...

There are problems with both of those sorts of tests...

Agreed.  I'm not arguing that such tests need to be done, because there is no need to validate a subjective experience.

Sorry for the long post but the issues aren't quite as simple as your questions seem to suggest.

That sounds a touch condescending, if you don't mind me saying.

To your points:

1- you're right that subjective experiences may not be able to be objectively verified but if your subjective experience is that there is a difference and the basis of that subjective experience is a difference in the actual sound rather than in one of the other things which can cause the subjective experience, the difference in sound should be able to be objectively verified. There's value in attempting to verify an actual difference in sound because if you can do that you've identified the reason, or one of the reasons, for the subjective experience and there are those people (not all) who demand that you do that.

2- I agree that there's no need to verify a subjective experience but the fact that there's no need to do so doesn't mean that doing it has no value or isn't worthwhile.

3- I wasn't intending to be condescending. I obviously see the issues being discussed in a different way to the way in which you see them. I was simply trying to make that point. I may not have made it in a way you liked but I wasn't trying to be condescending or to offend you, I was simply trying to state the fact that we're viewing the issues in a different way and that I was viewing them in a way which is in part due to my own experience, and I was apologising for the fact that I couldn't address the issues as I see them in a briefer manner.

At the moment we've got a lot of subjective reports and nothing concrete in the way of objective data. If we had the subjective reports and objective data which correlated well with those reports this whole discussion wouldn't be occurring, there would be nothing to talk about. That isn't the case.

Since it isn't the case there are 3 options available to each of us:

1- we can discuss what can or can't be objectively verified and we've both been doing that because I made comments on just that and you've questioned my comments, or

2- we can ignore the whole question of whether anything can be objectively verified and go with our own subjective experience to decide whether we each individually prefer RAAT or AIR and then we sit back and just listen to the one we prefer, or

3- we do both 1 and 2. There's nothing wrong with either of us deciding that RAAT is better than AIR or vice versa and just listening to the one we prefer while we think about and discuss matters about what might be able to be objectively verified and how one would go about doing that.

I've been following option 3. To the extent that you've been asking questions about my comments while saying that we don't need to objectively verify anything you've been doing the same thing and while we've both been doing that, it also is clear that we hold very different views on either or both of whether objective verification of what at least some of the things we hear is possible and on whether doing so has any value. If you want to raise questions or make observations about anything I said, that's fine and you're quite welcome to do so. I've taken the questions and observations you've made quite seriously and tried to answer them from the views I hold. I may not agree with your views but I have done my best to treat them with respect and I haven't criticised you in any way for the things you've said. I don't see that I can do any better than that.

I'm sorry if that isn't satisfactory to you but it's the best that I can do. I'm willing to keep discussing these issues and trying to clarify my views for as long as you wish to keep asking questions, and if you do ask a question or tell me I'm wrong I may choose to answer that in the best way I can. If you decide you don't want to continue the debate with me, that's fine or you can end it at any time by not responding to anything I say. I also can decide to end the debate at any time I decide not to respond to anything you say in response to me. This is a 2 way street and either of us can end it when we wish. I've been continuing it so far because I've felt that there is some value in trying to make my views clearer but perhaps we've reached a point where it's clear that we've stated our common ground is, and there is a fair amount of common ground between us, and where our differences are, and no useful purpose will be served by going over the differences. I do not mean to imply by saying that that I think you're wrong in your approach. I'm simply trying to say that this discussion is only of value to each of us for as long as what we each say gives the other something to think about and to reflect on in relation to their own views. If we're no longer saying anything that gives the other anything to think about then there's nothing more to say. We don't have to agree on every point that's been discussed and there is a time when the best thing do is just to agree to differ.

Have we reached that point? I'll let you decide.

[David A]

Does anyone have the same issue I do atter the update which is the first tiny fragment of the song is not audible so depending on if a song starts quick you'll notice this?

Yes, I have found exactly the same... anybody else experienced it, or have an explanation?

That hasn't happened here, either with Tidal or with music streamed from my own library. I have streamed music from my library at a variety of FLAC resolutions and also DSD64.

[thumb5]

Have we reached that point? I'll let you decide.

Yes, I think so. If my question was too simple to be simply answered, there is little point in prolonging the discussion. It's probably getting very tedious for everyone else.