Proof that DACs CAN make a difference! - Blind ABX Testing 

😂😂 I don't even bother...

The important part is do they pretend to like you back. That is true love.

You dont like me?

Ahahahahahahahahshha

I gave up on that 20 years ago

plz comeback metal we miss u

unreal, this guy

How can he afford the Focal speakers in the background at his age?

Comeback plz

​@@JordonaterInheritance / trust fund

Well it was the first time.....and bout time!

Well, if manufacturers were obligated to release atleast a small list of measurements with certain parameters, listening tests of eldctronics wouldn't be needed... Plus, measurements are infinitely more reliable

These aspects of audible sound from audio systems are a fundamental missing link in audio research. As are the relative differences between impedance capacitance and inductance of cables. Which tells us what and how? Which is valuable to understand a component or cable?

Some things are part of psychoacoustics, I guess there is just no way to measure them since it depends on the interaction of the sound + how the brain is interpreting it.

I commend you for accepting that the differences you heard were imagined. I've had similar experiences. But unfortunately, many people won't accept that the differences are imagined, so instead they dismiss the blind tests and insist that there must be an audible difference.

I'm not at all sceptical that he can hear above 20kHz. When I was 18 I could hear over 21kHz. Granted I was the only one in the class that could but I definitely could and I was surprised to see everyone else's hands had gone down when it went past 20kHz. I agree with you about whether it's particularly relevant though. And he hasn't actually blind tested DACs here.

I wonder since people like you mastering the music cant hear it does that mean he is hearing the noise you haven't filtered out the recording because you didnt know it was there?

Your kii monitors have DSP so any interface/DAC is irrelevant. The ADC is most important for mastering

​@@mccririck01yeah I could also hear ~21k when I was 18. Haven't tested in a while but I think I'm down 19-20k now

@@Jordonater lol

well... being so happy could be a proof of bias.

@@net_news Which due to the methodology wouldn't be relevant.

@@Uebelkraehe there are camera cuts so who knows...

If not snake then why snake-shaped??

That's why they extract oil out of them.

@@Lishtenbird your comment for the win

bird brain…

@@nelsonang snake brain?

If you have a bias and are expecting them to sound the same, yes

It can yes, but not in a consistent manner. Your brain can trick you into thinking one file sounds a certain way, but the point is that if you do enough runs, you can then show whether that difference is consistently attributable to one of the devices/files (ie: there is a genuine audible difference you can reliably pick out), or whether it was random and not likely a genuine difference

Yes. That's why blind tests are usually fail.

It set up just to confuse you in to thinking "there is no difference" completely flawed and ridiculous. This is not some kind of medical effect you are trying to find and separate from the placebo effect.

lol, just quick test showed me 10Hz - 21kHz - need to redo it in a quiet environment :D

Sorry to hear your day was full of treble.

Pretty insane as they only send square waves interpreted as 1's and 0's

Who's "they"?

@@andrewgiovannini6613 @3:53

Guys prob hear the difference between different coal brands, the power factory burns.

The two files are to test the effect of the oversampling filter in the DAC. By showing that this single factor makes a difference, that shows that DACs make a difference (and oversampling as a standalone factor makes a difference). The reason to do it this way is because there is no way to do a physical ABX test in a remotely verifiable way. Doing a digital test with shared and verifiable inputs and results was a necessary precursor to sharing physical ABX results in future reviews as this establishes a conclusive difference in a way that does not rely on trust.

​@@GoldenSound although this explanation is mathematically correct, I also felt disappointed. I got excited about this ABX device and expected you to invite several random listeners over to have a larger sample. And then it went into comparing the oversampling filter of a ~$4k device by reproducing the filters digitally. With the main difference being way beyond average listener's hearing. I understand, that your point was to prove if DACs can possibly make any difference at all. But from an entertainment perspective, the physical ABX would be much more fun to watch, especially if multiple listeners express what exactly they hear and how they tell the difference subjectively. Just an idea for pt. 2 ;-)

@@KodigyTech Surely the whole point to a test of this nature is to eliminate any possibility of subjectivity in the results?

It wasn't that long ago that DMS (on his channell, I think) was complaining about having a backlog of DACs he was supposed to review except he couldn't hear any differences between them. Such is the state of the industry in the 2020s, there's sod all room for improvement that humans can detect left.

the hd600s would be more source sensitive than the hd800s

@@TheRealPotoroo Wow really, do you remember what video that was?

I had lately after deciding that the DCA Expanse or Stealth did not provide the measurable performance upgrades compared to my Meze Elite that I was looking for become enthused about dishing out on a Holo Audio Bliss KTE as an "upgrade" to my FiiO K9 Pro ESS's internal THX 788+ amp that I was already pretty happy with, whereby I would either experience a revelation about "Class A sound" or be able to "brag" about not being able to hear differences in at-home controlled listening or even when sighted. I before biting the bullet managed to spend quite some time at a shop closely A/Bing under sighted and decently volume-matched conditions a few amps driven by my DAC/amp's line out and concluded that they were through my Meze Elite (which has so far shown the best EQed multi-tone distortion I have ever measured) all, even the albeit technically advertised as neutral McIntosh MHA200, identical in virtually every aspect I could pinpoint from detail to tonality, texture, dynamic impact, transient incisiveness, clarity, bigness, "holography" (which I find can be easily heard with some recordings, even one of Chinese orchestra only published on RU-vid), or the precise imaging location of certain sound sources in a reference track, which is to say that any measurable differences between those amps were probably indeed below audible so as to not matter. I am not so easily fooled into absurd subjective perceptions, but do know what extensive EQ and binaural HRTF rendering DSP can do for me. For more details, see post #9 of "Recommend a high-end DAC and amp stack to a genuinely curious objectivist" on Head-fi (links tend to cause troubles on RU-vid).

@@haelscheirs_haven Thanks for the post I'll check it out. Your experience mirrors somewhat what I experienced. To be honest it was weird because I actually wanted to hear differences but couldn't. Even worse, a lot of amps that people said had a "warm" or smooth signature just sounded the same to me [one of those I demoed was the Wa7 from Woo audio]. edit: Wanted to add that dacs/amps now for me are going to be more about features than anything else.

Btw, I'm 34 and can still hear 21k as well (according to some app).

Could be IMD, ie stuff above 20khz will give sounds under 20khz.

And multiple sessions every different day. Your listening ability pretty inconsistent.

Very few DACs can actually run NOS. And the ones that do typically have much larger measured differences in other areas as doing R2R well is pretty difficult

Yes. You can oversample and perform analogue filtering (either active or passive). Digital filtering is quite harmful to the sound in my experience. A standard method is a 'third order' low pass filter on 40khz or so. Modern DAC's are very integrated and sound quite poor to me, They perform many tasks making it easy to build in devices, but that comes to a price. It's a bit technical, but the current to voltage conversion is critical and I like it external to the DAC chip.

Did you find that you can hear a slight static pressure in your ears before a thunderstorm is about to happen? This is something i used to be able to do at 17 years old but have lost the ability to now at 23

It could also be IMD that you're hearing, ie something above 20khz that give audible errors below 20khz.

@@Jordonater Interesting, I never noticed if I could. I do notice something similar to that with any electronics/electrical wiring especially if there is bad wiring with ceiling fans. CRTs drive me insane with that too. Even LCD/IPS/etc panels I could tell they are on even if it was from a few rooms away, these days I have a much harder time with that, thankfully.

@@gurratell7326 That is always possible too but I have also experienced real world scenarios best examples are in my other reply. But another scenario is there is a parking garage near me that uses speakers to scare off bats and birds and out of a group of people I am the only person who can hear the whole audio snippet to the point where the audio clips and loops, everyone else I know it is dead silent to them after halfway through it.

@@zantdoeseverything3523 Thats cool

There is nothing wrong with budget dac since they all sounds the same.

If' you're listening to sounds that you recognize well-cymbal hits and so on-your brain fills in that missing information anyway, so you're probably still getting a similar experience listening to most music.

Unlistenable

It really rounds out the sharp edges in the treble. Poof, sibilance gone!

Yes. Concluding that the differences where only because he can hear above average frequency is not really a real explanation. So he can hear that fine. What about the rest of the spectrum. How he can be sure that he prefered one DAC above other only for the slower roll off filter? how about the bass quality or the voices? those are impacted by the filter pre and post ringing effects too. So if filters are different DACs can sound different. Even as they are flagged as "transparent" and ASR insist ignoring many people that can discern them and precisely identify their sound signatures.

Anecdotally, are least one person whose hearing is lowpassed at 17khz or so (me) heard the recordings during production, and they sounded *exactly* identical to me. I'll be interested in other people's ABX results, but to me, that's two copies of the same sound.

Device A and Device B are fixed. It's just X which is randomly assigned as either A or B each round. So after the test you can just look at which device is connected to input A or input B that you preferred

He's not testing for preference he's testing for difference. If you can't tell the difference then there can't be a preference But the computer records which is which so you can check after the experiment

Nothing