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by 0xf8
2725 days ago
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Doesn’t the equipment used for reproducing the soundstage matter in A/B testing? I haven’t done a rigorous test myself, because I’m comfortable having a predilection for high fidelity audio even if it isn’t demonstrably/empirically superior. But in my experience listening to music on a “audiophile” or “studio reference” setup, when the equipment is sufficiently sensitive and well engineered as to most accurately render the audio signal, I recall rather obviously noticing a difference in sound quality. I can’t imagine if you compare a 192kbps MP3 with a DSD256 audio file played on reference monitors from a high performance DAC there’d be no audible difference. Personally, using a McIntosh integrated amp and Focal Utopia headphones the first time I listened to a DSD track, 1-bit word depth sampled 2.8M times per second, it was unlike anything I’d ever heard before. I acknowledge that’s not a direct comparison, but all i’m saying is maybe the lossy vs lossless test performed on a low fidelity audio chain where the signal is always meaningfully subject to harmonic distortion before you hear it is the reason most people can’t tell a difference? |
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The idea you can take a group of non-professionals and run tests with no requirements on equipment quality and then draw conclusions about what any human can hear is absurd.
Those tests (Hydrogenaudio was one of the main proponents back when lossy codecs were more important) are a decent way to tell if something is audible for the average listener with average equipment. It cracks me up when people start telling me what I can or cannot hear based on those tests without knowing anything about me or what kind of equipment I own. This happened just the other day on an audio forum.
Another dimension to this is that DAC quality has been increasing steadily while the prices of high fidelity DACs have been dropping. The DAC chips on the market today are really the best ever made (ESS and AKM notably). More people than ever have access to (near-)reference quality DACs. When lossy compression tests were popular few people had access to reference quality DACs. I remember people talking about using their computer sound cards as sources for those tests.
I think a lot of people react negatively to this topic because it's considered elitist (expensive toys). The good news is just about anyone can afford a near-reference quality, inexpensive headphone setup these days. You have to do your homework and read reviews but they definitely exist. I recently picked up a DAP and IEMs for ~$300 total (for running) and it's 90% of the quality of my reference rig. I listen to it instead of my reference rig sometimes. It's that good, despite the price.
(Even on that, I can easily ABX FLAC and 192kps AAC, which has been universally declared "transparent" more than once.)
If you think your smartphone's audio jack sounds good, you really need to listen to a device with a proper amount of output power (you need more than you think for headphones) and a high resolution DAC. You need both to be good, though they can be part of the same device. When you have them, music really becomes holographic and, for lack of a better word, alive.