quote:

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...tell them to bugger off to the Arts building (or worse yet psychology at Sydney uni!)

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For chrissake, get down off that high horse of yours 'cos for someone who likes to brag about how highly educated they think they are you sure do come across as a dumb cunt most of the time!

-- edit --
My |33+ UBB 5ki||z just ain't what they used to be.

quote:

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Originally posted by kingcaleb:
However... this thread began with you flaming someone about their subjective opinion on Loewe DVD's - to which you pointed out that a Loewe is a rebadged Pioneer. A clear enough argument. That is the level of clarity I expected thereon, not 'you honestly think something with cheaper components is..ah LOL don't waste my time'.

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Caleb,

Mark Levinson is considered worldwide to be the LEADER in solid state High End Audio. I posted the links because they quite obviously when into a great deal of detail as to the various components they use, the reasons for using the components, and which components are more important for the reproduction of music.

"Laying the Foundation: The Perfect Power Supply Power supply quality and integrity is the foundation for the performance of all high-end audio components. Sadly, it is infrequently given the full consideration it deserves in digital products. Since the smallest signals recreated are on the order of one millionth of a volt, digital to analog conversion is actually more sensitive to the quality and stability of its power supply than any "pure" analog product (such as a power amplifier).

Digital audio processors are unique in that they do not reproduce music, they create it from a set of instructions which themselves bear no obvious resemblance to the music they describe. These instructions specify the proportion of the available power (from the power supply)that should be used from one moment to the next. Any instability in the supply of power distorts the recreated music, much as ripples on a pond spoil an otherwise pristine reflection. Even tiny ripples in the pond will distort a reflection of a tree, leaving (perhaps) only a vague
impression of something green and treelike. What we seek is a mirror-like reflection that allows you to see all of the individual leaves as well as the tree as a whole.

The Proceed DAP builds upon a base of tremendous precision: an oversized power supply with massive regulation, supplemented by multiple, local bypass capacitors and local regulation immediately adjacent to critical circuitry. In electronic terms, the power supply has been "polished" to provide a nearly ideal "mirror" on which the image of the music may be formed.

Balance of Power: Dual Differential Conversion The devices that translate the digital instructions into music in a digital
processor are called "digital to analog converters," or DACs. Unfortunately, even the finest DACs working with the finest power
supply introduce momentary errors into the musical signal. These "glitches" are like small hiccups in the music that occur at extremely high frequencies, and they cast a harsh, electronic, edgy quality over the music.

Fortunately, these glitches are characteristic of the DAC being used, and are quite consistent. By operating two identical DACs in opposite polarity for each channel of music, it is possible to cancel out the vast
majority of residual distortion, leaving only the music. To this end, the Proceed DAP employs something called "dual differential" digital to analog conversion, creating equal but opposite digital signals to drive the twin 18- bit DACs used in each channel. While using two DACs per channel where many would employ only one costs more, the benefits are clearly audible… and audibly clear "

Did you read any of the information provided, or in you ignorance and arrogance, did you just dimiss it all as nonsense??
Are you honestly going to tell me that this does not provide you with any answers as to why a DAC like mine will sound better than the DAC inside the PSX and hence why my "CD Player" will sound better.

quote:

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Originally posted by Dionysus:
My understanding of the reasoning behind this is:

- Seperate power supplies for DAC and transport. The power supply is one of the mostimportant parts in any hi fi component.Most High End DAC's like mine have 2 boxes, 1 for the power supply and one for the actual decoding as it keeps noise and distortion from the power supply away from the DAC. It is also much better for your Transport to have it's own power supply. This is also why receivers and integrated amps cannot match the performance of a seperate Pre/Power Amp, bacause of the extensive power supplies seperates use. My Per amp has a dedicated power supply that ids bigger and haevier that most Asian amps, and then lets not mention 7 kilo power supply for my DAC. I am not aware of any Asian cd player that even weighs that much.

- No vibration from Transport spinning to introduce noise and distortion into DAC. Most
one box cd players use internal damping and use vibration resistant material inside the
players to reduce vibration.

- Comercial or Industrial grade components instead of cheap off the shelf crap. Why does
a BMW cost more than a Ford, because BMW uses much higher quality parts, assemble a lot of things by hand, have exceptional quality control ect, which obviously cost more. I mean, do you really expect anyone to believe a PSX that is put together using the
cheapest parts possible, and manufacturered in some dodgy south east asian factory is
going to compare to a hand built, DAC made in Australia using the best components available.

- Excellent quality 16/20/24 bit DAC chip sets as opposed to the cheap crap used in Asian players.

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What, and none of this answered your question?? Or did you not read that bit??

"That is the level of clarity I expected
thereon"

quote:

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Originally posted by UrinalCake:
Excellent thinking Dionysus, by posting that information twice he might actually read it this time mate!

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Reminds me of that Jackie Chan movie Shanghai Noon :
"Why is he saying it louder? Does he think that will make us understand?"

quote:

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Originally posted by DJ Fusion:
*DJ Pokes tongue out at Super Scrooge*

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*LOL*

quote:

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Originally posted by kingcaleb:

Dionysus, if you think that is really the best way you can explain things, then I thank you for your efforts.
Sometimes people can be so ignorant of things, no amount of effort will help, but thanks for trying

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http://www.stereophile.com/cgi-bin/lm.cgi/ep?disp=100100,100200,-1,,7,50,,

quote:

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Originally posted by Dionysus:
...so I posted a little bit of info in the hope that you would pick up the trail and do your OWN research. Oh well!!

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It's accepted as fact in the industry that superior PSUs and DACs make for superior sound, yet you stick with your own, admittedly uninformed, opinion that they would produce the same sound as inferior components?

quote:

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Originally posted by Super Scrooge:
To recap, myself and kingcaleb were arguing that a PSX sounds just as good as any other CD players. Dionysus was arguing against that, and in the absence of any conclusive evidence from either side (subjective opinions are not evidence) I think it has pretty well much ended up a stalemate.

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I think Caleb quite clearly knows that a DVD player sounds a lot better than a PSX as a cd player, he just wants to know why!!! I missed that point until he cleared it up, and it appears you did to.

If you go into the links provided, they clearly state the components they use, why they use them, the effect on the end sound, and the importance each component plays in the final music. Does the PSX use any of the same or even similar parts? Is the PSX plastic or is it solid Aluminium? Is the cd tray of the PSX Aluminium or Plastic? Does the PSX use 4, 18 bit DACs in its D to A conversion stage? Does the PSX have an independent power supply( the most important part of any hi fi gear) Does the PSX have an HDCD filter?

I do not see anyone apart from yourself and Caleb having any difficulty in following the links and reading and understanding the information for themselves.

Also Superscrooge, a double blind listening test means all of jack and shit in the real world. Reason is simple. When under stress/pressure, your brain only processed a tiny percentage of the information it processes under relaxed conditions, so obviously if your senses are picking up a tiny percentage of what they usually do, then you are obviously not going to hear all the subtlties you would usually hear, because it is physically impossible.

Accepted in the industry you say? Well it's accepted as fact in the Anglican church that God exists, but that doesn't stop me being an atheist.

I may be cheap but never let it be said that I am ignorant or closed-minded. So in the interests of fair play, if you, Dionysus or anyone else here can pass a blind A/B comparison test of CD players then that will be all the proof I need. Until then, I am sticking to my guns. That's all you have to do, pass one little test.

quote:

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Originally posted by Super Scrooge:
So in the interests of fair play, if you, Dionysus or anyone else here can pass a blind A/B comparison test of CD players then that will be all the proof I need. Until then, I am sticking to my guns. That's all you have to do, pass one little test.

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Did you not read my above post. Why would anyone want to partake in something that they knew was phisically impossible??

quote:

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Originally posted by Super Scrooge:

Well it's accepted as fact in the Anglican church that God exists, but that doesn't stop me being an atheist.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Dionysus:
Did you not read my above post. Why would anyone want to partake in something that they knew was phisically impossible??

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Actually, I was replying to Koens post above yours and you beat me to it. I guess I should learn to type faster.

Anyway, I will take up your suggestion and test my CD players tonight. I have three, a PSX, a Bung Doctor V64, and a Sony CD walkman (ten years old and still going hard!)

My setup is my CD player(s) output to the line inputs of my VCR (my pre-amp ), through that and into a pair of Sony SAVA speakers. Built in amps, very convenient. These babies just don't go up to 11, they go up to 41!

I'll post my results later on. I think you will agree Dionysus, I can't be fairer than that.

quote:

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Originally posted by Dionysus:

Since when is it accepted as fact??? Just because someone preaches something, it does not mean they actually believe or live it. How many Anglican Priests have been charged with child molesting and other such hideous offences??

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I would expect they would blame the Devil for their actions. A cop-out if you ask me.

It is pretty much standard religous dogma that God exists. Therefore, in the minds of believers, it is a fact. But I think we are getting way off topic!

So here's a new argument :

quote:

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Originally posted by Dionysus:
a double blind listening test means all of jack and shit in the real world. Reason is simple. When under stress/pressure, your brain only processed a tiny percentage of the information it processes under relaxed conditions, so obviously if your senses are picking up a tiny percentage of what they usually do, then you are obviously not going to hear all the subtlties you would usually hear, because it is physically impossible.

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And here's a few facts :

1. Blind people have better hearing than sighted people because the part of their brain they would normally use for vision is used for hearing.

2. We see colour by combining the light from Red / Green / Blue the same way a tv does. So, for example, a colour usually looks red, because photons from the light source have just the right wavelengths and we decode this as red.

3. Eskimos have 50 words for snow.

4. Most people only use 10% of their brain. It is estimated Einstein used 40% of his brain.

5. When your attention is focused on something else, it is more likely you will hear your own name than someone else's from across the room.

6. When you are hypnotized, you can remember things you previously couldn't.

7. Stress and pressure cause a narrowing of attention.

All these facts emphasize that the brain can increase or decrease the amount of processing it conducts on various stimuli at will.
Therefore, on the basis of these facts, Dionysus's theory (restated in #7) is clearly correct.

Therefore this :

quote:

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Originally posted by Dionysus:
testing components in your own room, in your onw system for an extended period of time and deciding for ypourself what sounds right to YOU.

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...remains the best way to assess the value of components.

NO !

All the so-called 'facts' I stated are urban legends at best, and downright wrong at worst. Even something as straightforward as #2, which you may have been taught in highschool, is wrong.
A double-blind test (preferably using the method of constant stimuli) is a preferable way to objectively rule on the nature of a component. If we're just talking about tastes eg. "Bose sound harsh for music but good for movies that's why I like them" it's a non-argument. But you simply cannot say outrageous things like claim #7 to support an argument that we should abandon double blind tests.

Please don't take this as an attack on your personal skill Dionysus, or your industry - studies show that over time experience leads to true expertise. Think of wine tasters - it all just tastes like petrol to us - but years of experience leads experts to distinguish between thousands of kinds of wine. How do they do it ? Nobody knows. And here's the kicker - they don't know either. There are many forms of expertise - especially sensory based, where the skill develops over time, yet the expert themself is at a loss to explain it. After all, why should we expect that someone who is good at doing something, is simultaneously gaining the ability to understand all the intricacies of how they are doing it. Smokers believe cigarettes relax them, yet slap a heart rate monitor on them and they are more excited than ever. So why, Dionysus, should you think you know anything about auditory attention, just because you're a good listener?
So when Stooge and I demand to know why - YOU know why, and assume you can explain it to us, but you can't. So we keep whining and whining - and you keep posting links which explain things in a wierd language - and finally you resort to bunk psychology explanations.

quote:

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Originally posted by kingcaleb:

All the so-called 'facts' I stated are urban legends at best, and downright wrong at worst.

Resorting to rubbish theories about auditory attention doesn't work either.

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Please prove that what I said is an Urban Legend. I have been to 3 management courses in the last 3 years that have said the exact samne thing. The last course I was on (managing organisational change 2 weeks ago) was conducted by one of Australian leading maganement consultancy companies, as were the other 2 courses. So if the theory that your brain only processes a fraction of the information it does(they actually had the statistics ie under stress your brain processes a certain percentage of the information around you, then under stress, it was reduced to about 10tenth of information when under relaxed conditions, but I cannot find the stats offhand to post) is not correct, then why do these companies, who's livlihood it is to train/educate management, and who have spent the best parts of their lives researching and developing these programmes survive in the REAL world.

How do these companies stay in business if all they are doing is spreading Urban Legends??

LOL You are one funny person Caleb. Better luck next time.

quote:

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Originally posted by kingcaleb:
All the so-called 'facts' I stated are urban legends at best, and downright wrong at worst.

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Caleb... grow a brain.. or at least increase the % of your brain that you are using... haven't you ever heard of the cocktail party effect (ie. preferential recognition of your own name vs another word/name in a noisy situation)?? This is a well researched phenomena in social psychology... but you knew that didn't you Caleb? Or is all social psychology a bunch of shit in your eyes?